THE   POETS'  CHANTRY 


FRANCIS  THOMPSON 
At  the  age  of  19 


:  :  : 


Gbantr^ 


ISuxlfoeritw 


B.  Herder 

17  South  Broadway 
St.  Louis,  Mo. 


Herbert  &  Daniel 

95  New  Bond  St. 
London,  W. 


TO 
LOUISE    IMOGEN   GUINEY 


ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 

THE  author  acknowledges  her  grateful  indebted- 
ness to  the  Reverend  John  J.  Burke,  C.S.P., 
Editor  of  The  Catholic  World — in  which  magazine  all 
of  these  essays  have  appeared  either  wholly  or  in  part 
— for  permission  and  encouragement  to  republish  at 
this  time  :  to  Messrs.  Geo.  Bell  &  Sons  for  the  extracts 
taken  from  "Coventry  Patmore "  :  to  Mr.  Elkin 
Mathews  for  the  use  of  Lionel  Johnson's  poems  :  and 
to  Messrs.  Burns  &  Gates  for  the  use  of  those  of 
Francis  Thompson  and  Aubrey  de  Vere. 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

ROBERT  SOUTHWELL  i 

WILLIAM  HABINGTON  .  .  .  .18 

RICHARD  CRASHAW  .  .  .  -36 

AUBREY  DE  VERB   .  .  .  .  52 

GERARD  HOPKINS   .  .  .  .  70 

COVENTRY  PATMORE  .  .  .  .89 
LIONEL  JOHNSON     .....     120 

FRANCIS  THOMPSON  .  .  .  .142 

ALICE  MEYNELL      .  .  .  .  159 

BIBLIOGRAPHY          .  .  .  .  .     173 

INDEX          ......     177 


LIST   OF   ILLUSTRATIONS 


FRANCIS  THOMPSON  (at  the  age  of  19)    .  .          Frontispiece 

PAGE 

ROBERT  SOUTHWELL,  S.J.          .          .          .          .         .11 

From  an  old  print 

THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  HOLY  HOUSE  OF  LORETTO,  WHERE 

CRASHAW  LIES  BURIED  .  .  .  •         •    45 

AUBREY  DE  VERB  (at  the  age  of  20)  .  .         .    53 

From  a  coloured  drawing  by  Walter  G.  Cotts 

AUBREY  DE  VERB  (in  his  old  age)          .  .  .    65 

FR.  GERARD  HOPKINS,  S.J.        .  .  .  .         .    81 

By  courtesy  of  Fr.  Joseph  Keating,  SJ, 

COVENTRY  PATMORE        .          .          .          .          .         .113 

From  a  photograph  by  Barraud 

ALICE  MEYNELL     .          .          .          .          .  .  161 

From  a  photograph  by  Resta 


The  Poets'  Chantry 


ROBERT  SOUTHWELL 

"As  the  highest  Gospel  was  a  biography,  so," 
asserts  Carlyle,  "is  the  life  of  every  good  man 
still  an  indubitable  gospel."  It  is,  indeed,  the 
simplest  and  first  of  all  evangels,  the  evangel  of 
fact:  and  when  by  happy  consummation  it  becomes 
also  the  evangel  of  beauty  the  crown  is  assured. 
The  world  is  hungry  for  inspiration,  and  sooner 
or  later  will  capitulate.  The  meek  shall  possess 
the  land,  the  martyr  shall  reign,  even  the  poet 
shall  be  listened  to  at  last. 

There  is  Robert  Southwell,  for  instance — one- 
time priest  of  the  Society  of  Jesus,  onetime  prisoner 
in  the  Tower  of  London  town,  onetime  laureate  of 
the  Elizabethan  Catholics — whose  story  no  one 
can  read  to-day  without  more  than  an  intellectual 
interest.  To  say  that  he  is  best  worth  knowing 
for  the  sublimity  of  his  personal  character  is  to 
indicate  the  chasm  separating  him  from  the  great 
body  of  Elizabethan  songsters.  His  memory  is 
not,  as  so  frequently  happens,  sanctified  by  his 
art ;  rather  is  his  art  sanctified  by  the  life  which 
produced  it.  And  yet  one  would  not  willingly 
forget  that  the  young  priest's  immortality  is  mainly 
due  to  the  unique  charm  of  his  literary  work.  "  It 
marks  not  only  the  large  Roman  Catholic  element 


THE  POETS'  CHANTRY 


in  the  country  but  also  the  strange  contrasts  of 
the  times,"  comments  Dr.  Stopford  Brooke,  "that 
eleven  editions  [of  his  works]  were  published 
between  1595  and  1609,  at  a  time  when  the  Venus 
and  Adonis  of  Shakespeare  led  the  way  for  a 
multitude  of  poems  that  sung  of  love  and  delight 
in  England's  glory."  Such  was  once  his  popu- 
larity ;  and,  although  that  may  have  lapsed  for 
ever  now,  the  critics  are  not  alone  in  insisting 
upon  Father  Southwell's  permanent  place  in  our 
literature.  His  poetry,  so  strangely  free  from  the 
glad,  passionate  earthliness  of  most  Elizabethan 
lyrics,  is  full  of  quaint,  fanciful  grace — of  the 
grace,  too,  that  follows  deep  religious  fervour. 
The  hopes,  the  fears,  the  pathetic  weariness  of 
Catholics  in  those  evil  days,  all  entered  into  his 
work ;  these,  and  the  tender  mysticism  which 
bound  them  like  a  spell  to  the  Old  Religion.  Yet, 
when  all  is  said,  the  man's  life  is  in  itself  our 
choicest  heritage — his  life  as  poet,  as  priest,  and 
at  last,  as  martyr. 

Robert  Southwell's  birth  is  usually  placed  some- 
where in  1561  ;  a  year  which  saw  two  events  memor- 
able in  English  history — the  arrival  on  Scottish 
shores  of  the  young  Mary  Stuart,  and  Eliza- 
beth's final  break  with  the  Papacy  in  her  refusal 
to  send  envoys  to  the  Council  of  Trent.  He  was 
the  third  son  of  Richard  Southwell,  head  of  a  pro- 
minent Catholic  family  of  Horsham  St.  Faith's, 
Norfolk ;  it  is  interesting  also  to  note  that  his 
maternal  grandmother  was  a  Shelley,  and  of  the 
same  family  which  later  gave  birth  to  the  "Sky- 
lark" poet.  Robert's  adventures  seem  to  have 
begun  in  the  very  cradle,  whence  he  was  stolen  by 
some  wandering  gypsies  ;  but,  as  the  theft  was 
promptly  discovered,  it  bore  no  serious  conse- 
quence. Far  more  significant  is  the  fact  that  at  a 


ROBERT  SOUTHWELL 


very  early  age  the  boy  was  sent  to  school  at 
Douay,  where  a  seminary  had  been  established  to 
supply  the  needs  of  English  Catholics.  Here,  in 
the  person  of  Leonard  Lessius,  he  first  came  into 
intimate  contact  with  the  Society  of  Jesus,  destined 
to  be  so  potent  a  factor  in  his  life.  Later,  at  Paris, 
his  studies  were  continued  under  the  guidance  of 
Thomas  Darbyshire,  a  zealous  soul  and  one  of  the 
first  Englishmen  to  enter  that  Order.  The  Catholic 
mind  will  scarcely  need  any  comment  on  the  ardour 
and  self-consecration  of  these  early  Jesuits,  but  it 
is  edifying  to  read  the  following  tribute  from  such 
a  critic  as  Dr.  Alexander  B.  Grosart,  in  his 
"Memorial  Introduction"  to  Soutknelfs  Poems: 
"The  name  of  Ignatius  Loyola  was  still  a  recent 
'memory'  and  power,  and  his  magnificent  and 
truly  apostolic  example  of  burning  love,  com- 
passion, faith,  zeal,  self-denial,  charged  the  very 
atmosphere  with  sympathy  as  with  electricity.  .  .  . 
The  Society  was  then  in  its  first  fresh  '  love'  and 
force,  unentangled  with  political  action  (real  or 
alleged) ;  and  I  pity  the  Protestant  who  does  not 
recognise  in  Loyola  and  his  disciples  noble 
men  .  .  .  with  the  single  object  to  win  allegiance 
to  Jesus  Christ."  There  is  nothing  to  surprise  in 
the  fact  that  the  colossal  Jesuit  hope  of  winning 
back  Europe  to  Catholic  Christianity  should  have 
appealed  to  the  earnest  young  English  student, 
or  that  their  lives  should  have  excited  his  pas- 
sionate admiration  ;  but  it  is  worth  noting  that 
while  still  in  his  early  teens  Robert  Southwell 
should  have  formed  a  life-purpose,  from  which  he 
never  wavered.  To  "leave  all,"  to  take  up  the 
Cross,  and  bear  it  back  to  the  old  forsaken 
shrines,  became  the  one  dream  of  this  elect  young 
soul.  He  applied  for  admission  into  the  Society 
of  Jesus  ;  and,  being  refused  because  of  his  youth, 
wrote  an  impassioned  Lament  expressing  his 


THE  POETS'  CHANTRY 


disappointment.  Delay  tried,  but  did  not  in  the 
least  shake,  his  determination ;  so  finally  the 
coveted  consent  was  obtained,  and  on  the  i7th 
October,  1578,  his  name  was  formally  entered 
"amongst  the  children"  of  St.  Ignatius.  Two 
years  later  he  took  minor  orders  in  Rome,  and 
made  his  first  vows  as  a  scholastic  of  the  Society. 
Then  followed  four  peaceful  years  of  study,  during 
which  Southwell  was  occupied  with  philosophy 
and  divinity,  and,  incidentally  it  seems,  with 
verse-making.  In  this  case  the  u  poetic  tempera- 
ment" was  evidently  quite  compatible  with  hard 
work,  for  the  brilliancy  of  his  labours  soon  won 
him  the  prefecture  of  the  English  College  at  Rome. 
It  was  in  1584 — probably  his  own  twenty-fourth 
year — that  Robert  Southwell  received  the  final 
rites  of  ordination,  and  stood  prepared  to  begin 
his  apostolic  ministry. 

Almost  simultaneously,  a  law  was  passed  in 
England  (27  Elizabeth,  c.  2)  declaring  any  native- 
born  subject  who  had  entered  the  Catholic  priest- 
hood since  the  first  year  of  the  Queen's  accession, 
and  who  thereafter  resided  more  than  forty  days  on 
English  soil,  to  be  a  traitor,  and  liable  to  the 
penalty  of  death.  Severe  as  it  was,  it  nowise 
dampened  the  ardour  of  the  Jesuits  in  general, 
nor  of  Robert  Southwell  in  particular.  The 
English  mission — if  most  interesting — was  obvi- 
ously one  of  the  most  perilous  in  Europe :  religious 
fanaticism  had  been  aggravated  and  embittered  by 
political  hostility ;  the  air  was  dark  with  con- 
spiracies for  and  against  the  imprisoned  Queen  of 
Scots  ;  and  the  whole  country  was,  to  quote  Mr. 
Turnbull's  Memoir,  "in  a  ferment  of  political  in- 
trigues." Alarmed  by  Catholic  successes  abroad, 
Elizabeth  redoubled  the  rigour  of  her  Uniformity 
Acts  ;  the  celebration  of  Mass  was  forbidden  even 
in  private  houses,  the  fines  of  recusants  were 


ROBERT  SOUTHWELL 


increased,  and  over  every  Catholic  lowered  the 
shadow  of  high  treason.  But  what  was  a  stone 
about  the  neck  of  the  layman  became  a  knife  at 
the  throat  of  the  priest ;  upon  him  fell  the  real 
weight  of  the  persecution,  for  him  the  main  work 
of  martyrdom  was  reserved.  Against  Jesuits,  as 
supposed  tools  of  the  Papacy  to  sow  treason  in 
England,  popular  hatred  was  even  more  intense  ; 
they  were  "tracked  by  pursuivants  and  spies, 
dragged  from  their  hiding-places,  and  sent  in 
batches  to  the  Tower."  Then  from  dungeon  to 
scaffold  was  but  a  little  way.  And  all  this  was 
done,  of  course,  in  the  name  of  justice,  on  purely 
political  grounds  !  "  To  modern  eyes,"  as  Green 
very  aptly  remarks,  "there  is  something  even 
more  revolting  than  open  persecution  in  a  policy 
which  branded  every  Catholic  priest  as  a  traitor, 
and  all  Catholic  worship  as  disloyalty." 

But  had  not  Ignatius  Loyola  besought  for  his 
followers  this  legacy  of  persecution?  And  never 
a  prayer  so  promptly  answered  !  Seventy  priests 
had  already  gone  into  banishment,  not  to  mention 
those  who  had  suffered  death,  when,  on  8  May, 
1586,  two  more  intrepid  missionaries  set  out 
for  the  island.  One  of  them  was  Father  Garnett, 
subsequently  head  of  the  English  Jesuits  ;  the 
other,  Robert  Southwell.  In  spite  of  spies,  who 
somehow  ascertained  their  coming,  the  priests 
succeeded  in  landing  in  July,  and  in  reaching  the 
house  of  Lord  Vaux  of  Harrowden,  whither  they 
were  later  joined  by  others  of  the  Society.  There 
was  plenty  of  work  for  them  to  do  ;  there  was  also 
plenty  of  danger.  Father  Southwell,  who  passed 
in  secular  society  by  the  name  of  Cotton  and  who 
is  described  as  a  man  of  middle  height  and  auburn 
hair,  seems  to  have  been  watched  rather  narrowly 
from  the  beginning.  It  was  worse  than  a  dog's 
life  for  them  all,  and  the  necessary  precautions 


THE  POETS'  CHANTRY 


were  irksome.  Father  Gerard,  one  of  his  com- 
panions, tells  how  the  young  priest  tried  to 
familiarise  himself  with  terms  of  sport  for  the 
purpose  of  conversing  with  Protestant  nobles,  and 
adds  that  he  "  used  often  to  complain  of  his  bad 
memory  for  such  things."  On  the  other  hand, 
one  can  well  imagine  how  comforting  the  presence 
of  this  earnest,  sympathetic  soul  was  to  his  co- 
religionists, to  whom  he  ministered  largely  in 
London,  with  occasional  journeys  to  the  north  of 
England.  "He  much  excelled,"  says  Father 
Gerard,  "  in  the  art  of  helping  and  gaining  souls, 
being  at  once  prudent,  pious,  meek,  and  exceed- 
ingly winning." 

Almost  the  first  of  Father  Southwell's  cares  was 
to  win  back  the  wavering  faith  of  his  father  and 
his  brother.  The  former,  who  had  married  a  Pro- 
testant lady  of  the  Court,  was  restored  to  his 
birthright  by  a  most  eloquent  and  inimitable 
epistle  from  his  son.  "  Howsoever,"  it  concludes, 
after  playing  upon  almost  every  key  of  emotion, 
"the  soft  gales  of  your  morning  pleasures  lulled 
you  into  slumbers,  however  the  violent  heat  of 
noon  might  awake  affections,  yet  now  in  the  cool 
and  calm  of  the  evening  retire  to  a  Christian  rest, 
and  close  up  the  day  of  your  life  with  a  clear 
sunset." 

In  1589  Father  Southwell  became  chaplain  and 
confessor  to  the  Countess  of  Arundel,  whose  hus- 
band, Philip  Howard,  was  then  confined  in  the 
Tower.  There  followed  several  years  of  compara- 
tive safety  at  Arundel  House  in  the  Strand,  during 
which  began  his  real  literary  activity.  Triumphs 
over  Death,  perhaps  his  first  known  work,  was 
occasioned  by  the  death  of  a  certain  "  noble  lady  " 
of  the  Howards,  and  was  designed  as  a  comfort 
and  check  to  inordinate  grief.  Notes  on  Theology, 
and  other  prose  works  mostly  of  a  theological 


ROBERT  SOUTHWELL 


nature,  date  also  from  these  years.  But  it  is 
improbable  that  any  of  his  English  poems  were 
yet  composed.  From  Father  Gerard  we  learn- 
that  Southwell  set  up  a  private  printing  press ; 
from  which  it  would  appear  that  the  "apostolate 
of  the  press "  is  not  altogether  a  recent  idea. 
However,  Mary  Magdalen's  Funeral  Tears,  one 
of  his  most  popular  compositions,  and  model  of 
Thomas  Nash's  Chris  fs  Tears  over  Jerusalem,  was 
printed  by  Cawood  with  a  licence.  None  of  these 
works  was  signed,  but  the  Government  seems 
somehow  to  have  suspected  the  authorship. 

The  letters  written  by  Father  Southwell  during 
these  years  reveal  the  Catholic  life  of  the  day  with 
terrible  simplicity.  Mary  Stuart  had  bowed  her 
weary  head  upon  the  block  ;  the  Spanish  Armada 
had  come  and  gone,  uniting  Catholic  and  Pro- 
testant in  a  common  zeal  to  protect  England  ;  it 
would  seem  that  Elizabeth  had  no  longer  much 
need  to  fear  the  Old  Religion.  Yet  the  persecu- 
tions went  on  with  pitiless  insistence.  "The 
condition  of  Catholic  recusants  here,"  wrote  Father 
Southwell  in  1590,  "  is  the  same  as  usual,  deplor- 
able and  full  of  fears  and  dangers,  more  especially 
since  our  adversaries  have  looked  for  wars.  As 
many  as  are  in  chains  rejoice,  and  are  comforted 
in  their  prisons ;  and  they  that  are  at  liberty  set 
not  their  hearts  upon  it,  nor  expect  it  to  be  of  long 
continuance.  All,  by  the  great  goodness  and 
mercy  of  God,  arm  themselves  to  suffer  anything 
that  can  come,  how  hard  soever  it  may  be,  as  it  shall 
please  our  Lord  ...  A  little  while  ago  they  appre- 
hended two  priests,  who  have  suffered  such  cruel 
treatment  in  the  prison  of  Bridewell  as  can  scarce 
be  believed.  .  .  .  Some  are  there  hung  up  for 
whole  days  by  the  hands,  in  such  manner  that 
they  can  but  just  touch  the  ground  with  the  tips 
of  their  toes  .  .  .  This  purgatory  we  are  looking 


8  THE  POETS'  CHANTRY 

for  every  hour,  in  which  Topcliffe  and  Young,  the 
two  executioners  of  the  Catholics,  exercise  all 
kinds  of  torments.  But  come  what  pleaseth  God, 
we  hope  we  shall  be  able  to  bear  all  '  in  Him  that 
strengthens  us.J "  Even  through  this  darkness, 
eyes  of  faith  caught  gleams  of  a  coming  sunrise. 
"  It  seems  to  me,"  he  wrote  later  that  year,  in 
words  which  were  to  prove  so  deeply  prophetic, 
"that  I  see  the  beginning  of  a  religious  life  set 
on  foot  in  England,  of  which  we  now  sow  the  seeds 
with  tears,  that  others  hereafter  may  with  joy  carry 
in  the  sheaves  to  the  heavenly  granaries.  .  .  . 
With  such  dews  as  these  the  Church  is  watered. 
.  .  .  We  also  look  for  the  time  (if  we  are  not  un- 
worthy of  so  great  a  glory)  when  our  day  (like 
that  of  the  hired  servant)  shall  come." 

His  day  was,  in  fact,  not  long  to  be  deferred. 
In  1592  Father  Southwell  made  a  dangerous  ac- 
quaintance in  the  person  of  Richard  Bellamy  of 
Uxenden  Hall,  one  of  whose  kinsmen  had  been  exe- 
cuted in  connection  with  the  "  Babington  Conspi- 
racy," and  every  member  of  whose  family  was  under 
suspicion  as  to  his  belief.  The  young  Jesuit 
said  Mass  at  their  home  and  ministered  to  the 
whole  household,  until  the  storm-cloud  suddenly 
broke  above  their  heads.  Anne  Bellamy,  a  young 
daughter,  was  chosen  as  the  Government's  first 
victim.  She  was  confined  in  the  Gatehouse  at 
Westminster  under  the  care  of  one  Nicholas  Jones, 
and  the  story  of  her  double  fall  is  as  brief  as  it  is 
ugly.  Having  lost  both  faith  and  virtue,  the  girl 
was  soon  persuaded  to  the  final  baseness  of  betray- 
ing her  family  and  her  friends.  From  her  the 
savage  Topcliffe  learned  that  Richard  Bellamy 
was  in  the  habit  of  receiving  Father  Southwell 
and  other  priests  at  his  home ;  he  learned  the 
manner  of  their  coming  and  other  details  ;  then, 
like  Judas  of  old,  he  acted  quickly. 


ROBERT  SOUTHWELL 


On  20  June,  Southwell  rode  over  to  Uxen- 
den  with  Thomas  Bellamy— some  say  in  hopes 
of  ministering  to  Anne,  who  herself  had  written 
for  him — and  fell  directly  into  Topcliffe's  snare. 
"I  never  did  take  so  weighty  a  man,  if  he 
be  rightly  used,"  wrote  that  officer  to  the  Queen  ; 
and  the  sinister  meaning  of  his  words  was  soon 
apparent.  The  young  priest  was  brutally  tortured 
in  his  captor's  own  house  ;  then  sent  to  West- 
minster, under  the  care  of  the  scoundrel  who 
had  now  become  Anne  Bellamy's  husband.  In 
September  a  new  entry  appeared  in  the  records  of 
the  grim  Tower  of  London,  that  of  "Robert 
Southwell,  alias  Cotton,  a  Jesuit  and  infamous 
traitor  "  ;  and  the  old  gruesome  story  was  repeated. 
His  fortitude  during  these  ordeals  coerced  the 
admiration  of  Cecil  himself.  "There  is,"  the 
latter  wrote,  "at  present  confined  one  Southwell, 
a  Jesuit,  who,  thirteen  times  most  cruelly  tortured, 
cannot  be  induced  to  confess  anything,  not  even 
the  colour  of  a  horse  whereon  on  a  certain  day  he 
rode,  lest  from  such  indication  his  adversaries 
might  conjecture  in  what  house,  or  in  what 
company  of  Catholics,  he  that  day  was." 

Persecution  makes  of  some  men  misanthropes  ; 
of  others,  saints ;  of  Father  Southwell  it  made  a 
poet.  Broken  by  torture,  imprisoned  in  the  dark- 
ness and  filthiness  of  the  dungeon,  he  still  worked 
for  his  beloved  people — and,  unable  to  speak,  he 
sang.  His  spirit  was  like  that  pure  frankincense 
of  which  Lyly  tells  us  that  it  "smelleth  most  sweet 
when  it  is  in  the  fire."  Dr.  Grosart  opines  that 
the  entire  body  of  his  poetical  work  was  produced 
in  prison,  and  this,  being  true,  adds  enormously 
to  its  interest  and  its  pathos.  The  Government, 
no  doubt  in  hopes  of  forcing  some  revelation,  kept 
him  awaiting  trial  over  three  years.  During  most 
of  this  time  he  was  confined  in  a  dungeon  so 


10  THE  POETS'  CHANTRY 

unspeakably  noisome  that  Richard  Southwell 
finally  petitioned  the  Queen  that  his  son  be  put  to 
death  if  he  deserved  it,  or  else,  as  he  was  a  gentle- 
man, that  he  be  treated  as  such.  This  protest 
availed  somewhat,  for  the  prisoner  was  allowed  to 
receive  clothing  and  a  few  other  necessaries  and 
even  some  books ;  of  which,  however,  he  asked 
only  for  the  Bible  and  St.  Bernard. 

At  last,  in  1595 — and  without  any  previous 
warning,  says  the  St.  Omer  MS. — he  was  hurried 
off  to  Westminster  and  placed  on  trial  for  High 
Treason.  The  courtesy,  dignity  and  Christian 
meekness  of  Father  Southwell  throughout  this 
travesty  of  justice  were  most  impressive.  When 
questioned,  he  pleaded  "  not  guilty  of  any  treason  "  ; 
but  he  freely  acknowledged  the  only  crime  with 
which  he  was  charged — that  of  fulfilling  the  duties 
of  a  Catholic  priest  to  his  suffering  co-religionists. 
The  result  was  fore-ordained;  England  had  a  law, 
"and  by  that  law  he  ought  to  die."  Once  more 
torture  did  its  revolting  work  upon  his  much-tried 
body ;  then,  at  dawn  next  morning,  his  gaoler 
bore  him  the  final  summons.  "  You  could  not 
bring  me  more  joyful  tidings,"  the  priest  answered 
simply. 

So  at  daybreak,  on  22  or  23  February,  1595, 
he  was  placed  in  a  sledge  and  drawn  to  Tyburn 
for  execution.  Bishop  Challoner  tells  us  that 
a  notorious  highwayman  was  executed  on  the  same 
day  to  divert  popular  attention  from  Father 
Southwell's  doom  ;  nevertheless,  the  usual  mob 
awaited  him.  The  priest  who  was  to  pour  out  his 
life-blood  for  these  English  people,  the  poet  who 
had  sung  to  them  from  his  dungeon,  gazed  down 
upon  the  upturned  faces — upon  the  hostile,  the 
friendly,  and  the  merely  curious.  Then,  signing 
himself  with  the  Cross,  he  began  to  speak. 
"Whether  we  live,  we  live  unto  the  Lord;  or 


ROBERT  SOUTHWELL,  S.J. 

From  an  old  print 


ROBERT  SOUTHWELL  n 

whether  we  die,  we  die  unto  the  Lord.  Therefore 
whether  we  live  or  whether  we  die  we  are  the 
Lord's."  The  words  were  scarcely  uttered  before 
the  sheriff  attempted  some  interruption ;  but  silence 
being  regained,  the  young  priest  continued,  crav- 
ing of  the  "most  clement  God  and  Father  of 
Mercies,"  forgiveness  "  for  all  things  wherein  I 
may  have  offended  since  my  infancy.  Then,  as 
regards  the  Queen  (to  whom  I  have  never  done 
nor  wished  any  evil),  I  have  daily  prayed  for  her, 
and  now  with  all  my  heart  do  pray,  that  from  His 
great  mercy  .  .  .  He  may  grant  that  she  may  use 
the  ample  gifts  and  endowments  wherewith  He 
hath  endowed  her  to  the  immortal  glory  of  His 
name,  the  prosperity  of  the  whole  nation,  and  the 
eternal  welfare  of  her  soul  and  body.  For  my 
most  miserable  and  with  all  tears  to  be  pitied 
country,  I  pray  the  light  of  truth  whereby,  the 
darkness  of  ignorance  being  dispelled,  it  may 
learn  in  and  above  all  things  to  praise  God,  and 
seek  its  eternal  good  in  the  right  way." 

There  is  a  quite  superlative  pathos  in  these 
prayers  of  the  condemned  man  for  the  Queen  and 
country  which  thus  repudiated  him.  Far  ahead 
into  the  future  of  England  his  thoughts  were 
wandering,  when  suddenly  he  returned  to  the 
awful  present.  "  For  what  may  be  done  to  my 
body,"  he  cried,  "I  have  no  care.  But  since 
death,  in  the  admitted  cause  for  which  I  die, 
cannot  be  otherwise  than  most  happy  and  desir- 
able, I  pray  the  God  of  all  comfort  that  it  may  be 
to  me  the  complete  cleansing  of  my  sins,  and  a 
real  solace  and  increase  of  faith  to  others.  For  I 
die  because  I  am  a  Catholic  priest,  elected  unto 
the  Society  of  Jesus  in  my  youth  ;  nor  has  any 
other  thing,  during  the  last  three  years  in  which  I 
have  been  imprisoned,  been  charged  against  me. 
This  death,  therefore,  although  it  may  now  seem 


12  THE  POETS'  CHANTRY 

base  and  ignominious,  can  to  no  rightly  thinking 
person  appear  doubtful  but  that  it  is  beyond  mea- 
sure an  eternal  weight  of  glory  to  be  wrought  in 
us,  who  look  not  to  the  things  which  are  visible, 
but  to  those  which  are  unseen." 

The  simple  spiritual  grandeur  of  this  valediction 
sank  into  the  hearts  of  the  listening  multitude, 
and  won  them,  in  spite  of  Protestant  detractors,  to 
the  martyr's  side.  The  executioner  did  his  work 
clumsily,  which  added  extra  torment  to  Father 
Southwell's  death ;  but  to  the  last  he  calmly 
commended  his  soul  to  its  Maker.  One  is  com- 
forted in  this  dark  history  to  read  that  the  mob 
itself  prevented  his  body  being  taken  down  before 
dead,  as  the  sentence  had  directed.  "May  my 
soul  be  with  this  man's  !  "  exclaimed  Lord 
Mountjoy,  a  bystander  ;  and  when  the  poor, 
severed  head  was  held  aloft  to  the  public  gaze, 
not  one  voice  was  heard  to  cry  "  Traitor." 

The  world,  after  its  wont,  was  kinder  to  the 
man's  work  than  to  the  man  himself.  Three 
volumes  of  his  productions — already  even  popu- 
lar, as  it  seems  —  were  published  immediately 
after  Father  Southwell's  death ;  and  they  were 
followed  by  a  host  of  others.  In  a  very  eminent 
degree  was  this  young  Jesuit  the  "  poet  of  Roman 
Catholic  England  "  ;  but  he  was  not  merely  the 
poet  of  any  single  class.  He  spoke  to  the  sorrow- 
ful and  serious  of  soul,  to  the  meek  and  the  devout ; 
and  the  Old  Faith  and  the  New  ceased  their  war- 
fare to  listen.  The  longest  and  most  ambitious  of 
his  poems,  but  by  no  means  his  best,  is  St.  Peter's 
Complaint.  The  ever  sympathetic  Dr.  Grosart 
anticipates  a  very  natural  objection  in  pointing 
out  that  "  regarded  as  so  many  distinct  studies  of 
the  tragic  incident,  it  is  ignorance  and  not  know- 
ledge that  will  pronounce  it  tedious  or  idly  para- 
phrastic," for  the  constant  play  of  fancy  is  too 


ROBERT  SOUTHWELL  13 

redundant  for  modern  readers.  Such  striking 
passages  as  the  following,  however,  do  much  to 
relieve  the  monotony  : — 

At  Sorrow's  door  I  knocked,  they  craved  my  name  : 

I  answered,  one  unworthy  to  be  known. 

What  one?  say  they.     One  worthiest  of  blame. 

But  who?     A  wretcft,  not  God's  nor  yet  his  own. 

A  man?    Oh  no!  a  beast;  much  worse.    What  creature  ? 

A  rock.     How  called  ?     The  rock  of  scandal,  Peter  ! 

Throughout  his  shorter  poems  Father  South- 
well shows  to  truer  advantage.  It  was  inevitable 
that  the  minor  notes  of  life  should  have  struck 
deepest  echo  in  our  poet's  heart.  Their  very 
titles,  Scorn  Not  the  Least,  Life  is  but  Loss,  What 
Joy  to  Live?  etc.,  carry  a  message  which  those  that 
run  may  read.  But  their  sadness  is  utterly  with- 
out bitterness  or  pessimism,  their  weariness  of 
life  always  presses  on  to  a  hope  beyond.  A 
few  lines  from  Times  go  by  Turns  will  serve  to 
illustrate  the  beauty,  even  the  cheerfulness,  of 
his  thought : — 

Not  always  fall  of  leaf,  nor  ever  spring, 
No  endless  night,  yet  not  eternal  day  ; 
The  saddest  birds  a  season  find  to  sing, 
The  roughest  storm  a  calm  may  soon  allay  ; 
Thus  with  succeeding  turns  God  tempereth  all, 
That  man  may  hope  to  rise,  yet  fear  to  fall. 

But  the  most  masterful  of  Father  Southwell's 
lyrics — the  lyric,  indeed,  to  claim  which  Drum- 
mond  of  Hawthornden  tells  us  Ben  Jonson  would 
willingly  have  destroyed  more  than  one  of  his  own 
poems, — is  the  famous 

BURNING-BABE. 

As  I   in  hoary  winter's   night  stood  shivering  in  the 
snow. 


14 THE  POETS'  CHANTRY 

Surprised  I   was  with   sudden  heat,  which  made  my 

heart  to  glow  ; 
And   lifting  up   a   fearful  eye  to  view  what  fire  was 

near, 

A  pretty  Babe  all  burning  bright  did  in  the  air  appear, 
Who,  scorched  with  excessive  heat,  such  floods  of  tears 

did  shed, 
As  though  His  floods  should  quench  His  flames,  which 

with  His  tears  were  fed. 

"Alas!"  quoth  He,  "But  newly  born,  in  fiery  heats 

I  fry, 
Yet  none  approach  to  warm  their  hearts  or  feel  My  fire 

but  I! 
My  faultless  breast  the  furnace  is,  the  fuel  wounding 

thorns, 
Love  is  the  fire,  and  sighs  the  smoke,  the  ashes  shame 

and  scorns  ; 

The  fuel  Justice  layeth  on,  and  Mercy  blows  the  coals  ; 
The  metal  in  this  furnace  wrought  are  men's  defiled 

souls, 
For  which,  as  now  on  fire  I  am,  to  work  them  to  their 

good, 
So   will    I    melt    into    a   bath    to    wash    them    in    My 

blood  "  : 
With    these    He   vanished   out   of  sight,    and   swiftly 

shrunk  away, 
And  straight  I  called  unto  mind  that  it  was  Christmas 

Day. 

This  deep  religious  fervour  permeates  the  poet's 
entire  work,  not  merely  the  Mceonice,  a  series  on 
the  life  of  our  Saviour  and  His  Mother,  but  even 
the  shortest  lyric,  without,  I  think,  one  single 
exception.  He  bitterly  regretted  the  worldliness 
of  most  Elizabethan  verse,  complaining  in  one  of 
his  Introductions  that  "The  finest  wits  are  now 
given  to  write  passionate  discourses."  To-day, 
perhaps,  we  see  the  deep  human  value  of  many  of 
these  same  "passionate  discourses"  more  clearly 


ROBERT  SOUTHWELL 


than  did  the  pious  young  priest ;  nor  can  we  resist 
smiling  a  little  at  his  ingenious  recasting  of  Master 
Dyer's  "Fancy,"  wherein  the  subject  is  made  to 
mourn  a  lack  of  grace  instead  of  love!  But  the 
constancy  and  depth  of  this  devotion,  and  the 
delicacy  of  imagination  which  accompanied  it, 
both  charm  and  coerce  our  admiration.  They  are 
the  characteristics  of  his  prose  as  well  as  his  verse 
— they  are  the  dominant,  unmistakable  notes  of 
his  personality.  And  if,  in  his  own  words,  his 
work  be  "coarse  in  respect  of  others'  exquisite 
labours,"  we  shall  not  easily  forget  the  circum- 
stances which  called  it  into  being:  the  "evident 
fact,"  to  quote  Mr.  Saintsbury,  "that  the  author 
thought  of  nothing  else  than  of  merely  cultivating 
the  Muses." 

Two  obvious  defects  to  be  found  in  Southwell's 
works  are  extravagance  of  metaphor  and  an  almost 
monotonous  habit  of  playing  upon  words  ;  for  both 
of  which,  however,  the  age  must  be  held  respon- 
sible. When  one  recalls  the  years  during  which 
he  wrote — the  vogue  of  the  sonnet-sequences,  of 
Euphuesy  Arcadia,  and  the  Faerie  Queene — it  is 
understood  that  "conceits"  were  in  the  very  air. 
Sir  Philip  Sidney  himself,  we  remember,  has 
somewhere  compared  a  white  horse  speckled  with 
red  to  "a  few  strawberries  scattered  in  a  dish  of 
cream  ! "  And  the  fundamental  merit  of  Father 
Southwell's  poetry  has  ever  been  recognised  by 
the  best  critics,  his  literary  influence  being  to-day 
more  and  more  appreciated.  This  influence  is 
very  manifest  in  the  poems  of  Richard  Crashaw; 
and  the  lines  from  Scorn  Not  the  Least — 

He  that  the  growth  on  cedars  did  bestow, 
Gave  also  lowly  mushrooms  leave  to  grow — 

find  an  echo  in  Blake's  Tiger.  "As  a  whole," 
summarises  Dr.  Grosart,  "his  poetry  is  healthy 


16 THE  POETS'  CHANTRY 

and  strong,  and  I  think  has  been  more  po- 
tential in  our  literature  than  appears  on  the  sur- 
face. I  do  not  think  it  would  be  hard  to  show  that 
others  of  whom  more  is  heard  drew  light  from 
him,  as  well  early  as  more  recent,  from  Burns  to 
Thomas  Hood." 

Biography  is,  after  all,  the  best  history  ;  and  the 
life  of  Robert  Southwell  reveals  one  phase  of 
Elizabethan  England  better  than  a  dozen  com- 
mentaries. It  is  not,  indeed,  the  phase  oftenest 
remembered.  In  the  stirring  political  drama  of 
the  day,  in  the  clash  of  arms  and  clash  of  wits 
through  which  England  was  led  to  unprecedented 
material  splendour,  he  played  but  little  part.  Still 
further  was  he  from  the  wild  Bohemianism  of 
Greene  and  Marlowe,  or  the  mature  artistic  glory 
of  those  who  congregated  at  the  old  Mermaid 
Tavern.  But  there  was  a  darker,  sadder  under- 
current to  this  rushing  tide  of  Elizabethan  life. 
There  was  the  ardent  Catholic  minority,  nowise 
deaf  to  the  call  of  the  young  intellectual  life,  nor 
blind  to  the  signs  of  England's  growing  strength 
— sensitive,  indeed,  to  every  vital  influence — yet 
compelled  into  hostile  inactivity.  Adherents  of 
the  Old  Faith  were  shut  out  from  both  the  great 
Universities  ;  they  had  no  part  in  the  adminis- 
tration of  justice  ;  they  were  ineligible  for  any 
public  office  in  the  kingdom.  Thus  a  great  body 
of  men  with  the  culture  of  the  New  Learning  and 
the  passion  of  the  Renaissance  were  found  march- 
ing not  with  but  against  the  trend  of  their  age. 
Some  of  them  sought  adventure  overseas,  or 
plunged  into  purely  secular  activity  ;  others, 
already  forced  into  disloyalty,  spent  their  time 
plotting  a  change  in  government,  and  were  the 
easy  prey  of  each  new  conspiracy.  Still  others, 
purified  by  persecution,  rose  above  the  heat  and 


ROBERT  SOUTHWELL 


bitterness  of  personal  feud  to  apostolic  zeal  and 
endurance,  and  fought  the  losing  fight  so  nobly 
that  in  their  very  defeat  lay  the  assurance  of  an 
abiding  victory.  Of  these  last  was  Robert  South- 
well. 


WILLIAM  HABINGTON 

IT  is  sometimes  precisely  because  of  his  limitations 
that  a  poet  is  interesting.  The  great  genius  is  cos- 
mopolitan— of  all  time  and  every  age  :  the  lesser  star 
is  personal  and  national,  and  often  very  valuably 
provincial.  He  has  his  unique  and  particular 
message,  delivered  in  his  own  individual  way,  and, 
if  it  be  a  sincere  and  beautiful  message,  the  world 
can  ill  afford  to  be  without  it.  Moreover,  there 
exists  no  infallible  authority  for  determining  the 
status  of  an  author,  "  infinite  riches  in  a  little 
room  "  having  been  more  than  once  revealed  in  a 
search  through  forgotten  pages.  With  all  the 
greater  confidence  do  we  remember,  and  repeat, 
these  truths  when  the  minor  poet  happens  to  be 
such  an  engaging  person  as  William  Habington 
— and  one  whose  life  was  so  representative  in  its 
very  isolation. 

Gentle  by  birth,  and  by  nature  a  student,  he 
seemed  at  one  time  claimed  for  the  priesthood. 
But  love,  in  the  person  of  "Castara,"  came  into 
Habington's  life — and  behold,  his  name  comes 
down  to  us  as  poet  instead.  The  single  volume 
due  to  this  inspiration  is  the  foundation  of  his 
literary  fame,  and  to  a  large  extent  the  explanation 
of  his  life.  Were  all  outer  details  of  his  biography 
lost,  we  should  still  know  the  heart  of  this  austere 
but  lovable  young  Englishman  from  the  revela- 
tions of  his  Castara. 

Happily,  however,  there  are  other  channels  of 
information.  From  the  reign  of  Henry  IV,  the 
Habington  (or  Abington)  family  had  been  a 

18 


WILLIAM   HABINGTON  19 

representative  one,  and  during  the  sixteenth  cen- 
tury its  annals  were  particularly  stirring.  A  certain 
John  Habington  was  cofferer  to  Queen  Elizabeth, 
and  seems  to  have  lived  peaceably  enough  through 
those  tumultuous  times  ;  but  his  two  sons  were  of 
more  radical  temper.  Edward  was  executed  in 
1586  for  participation  in  Anthony  Babington's 
Conspiracy ;  and  his  brother  Thomas  (the  father 
of  the  poet)  was  only  less  unfortunate.  His 
studies  at  Oxford  had  been  supplemented  at  Paris 
and  Rheims,  whence,  ' '  after  some  time  spent  there 
in  good  letters,"  he  returned  to  England — an 
exceedingly  zealous  Catholic.  Although  onetime 
godson  to  Queen  Elizabeth,  Thomas  Habington 
now  acknowledged  himself  an  adherent  of  Mary 
Stuart — and  was  promptly  despatched  to  the  Tower. 
His  imprisonment  there  lasted  six  years,  and  from 
Anthony  a  Wood's  account  we  learn  that  "he 
profited  more  in  that  time  in  several  sorts  of 
learning  than  he  had  before  in  all  his  life."  He 
seems,  indeed,  to  have  passed  most  of  his  sub- 
sequent years  in  scholarly  pursuits,  living  at  the 
family  estate  of  Hindlip  Hill  with  his  wife  Mary, 
a  sister  of  Lord  Mounteagle. 

In  the  year  1604,  after  a  brief  respite,  King 
James  revived  the  penal  laws  against  his  Catholic 
subjects.  Severe  fines  for  recusancy  were  once 
more  demanded  (even  for  the  period  of  toleration) ; 
and  in  default  of  such  payment  all  the  personal 
goods  and  two-thirds  of  the  lands  of  the  victim 
became  forfeit  to  the  Crown.  Hundreds  of  families 
were  thus  pauperised,  and  conditions  became  more 
and  more  intolerable  all  over  England.  "It  is 
both  odious  and  grievous,"  wrote  Father  Gerard, 
"that  true  and  free-born  subjects  should  be  given 
as  in  prey  to  others."  But  the  work  went  on  ; 
until  the  fanaticism  of  one  little  band  of  zealots 
rose  to  fever  heat,  and  in  the  mind  of  Robert 


20  THE  POETS'  CHANTRY 

Catesby  was  conceived  the  Gunpowder  Plot.  The 
writer  of  the  warning  letter  sent  to  Lord  Mount- 
eagle  by  which  the  Plot  was  frustrated  has  never 
been  positively  identified,  but  Wood  asserts  that 
it  was  none  other  than  Mary  Habington.  On  the 
very  day  which  had  been  set  for  the  Gunpowder 
affair — the  fifth  (or  possibly  the  fourth)  of  Novem- 
ber, 1605 — her  son  William  was  born.  It  was  in 
truth  a  troublous  world  upon  which  the  future  poet 
opened  his  infant  eyes.  England,  from  her  vacil- 
lating King  to  her  intensely  Puritan  Commons, 
had  fallen  into  a  panic  over  the  Plot.  Catholics 
were  in  worse  repute  than  ever,  and  upon  the 
Jesuits  burst  the  main  torrent  of  popular  fury.  In 
this  crisis,  Father  Garnett,  their  Provincial,  (he 
who  had  sailed  with  Robert  Southwell  to  the 
unhappy  island  some  twenty  years  before)  fled 
for  shelter  to  the  home  of  the  Habingtons.  Hindlip 
was  admirably  adapted  to  the  situation,  containing 
no  less  than  eleven  secret  chambers,  and  having 
served  before  this  as  refuge  for  the  persecuted 
priesthood.  But  the  Government  was  watching. 
In  January,  1606,  after  a  search  of  eleven  nights 
and  twelve  days,  Garnett  was  discovered  :  a  few 
months  later  he,  too,  was  executed.  And  while 
the  elder  Habington's  life  was  spared,  it  was  on 
condition  that  he  never  subsequently  put  foot  out- 
side of  Worcestershire. 

After  that,  Hindlip  Hill  was  tranquil  enough. 
William's  childhood  passed  uneventfully  amid  its 
beautiful  surroundings,  while  the  father  continued 
his  antiquarian  researches  concerning  the  cathe- 
drals of  Worcester,  Chichester,  etc.  At  least  two 
characteristics  of  the  poet's  later  life — his  fervent 
and  enlightened  catholicity  and  his  love  of  peace 
— may  be  traced  to  the  environment  of  these  early 
years.  For  bloody  and  turbulent  memories  were 
a  thing  of  the  past  to  Hindlip  :  little  by  little  the 


WILLIAM   HABINGTON  21 

smoke  of  battle  faded  from  its  walls,  and  sunlight 
entered  in.  When  William  was  old  enough  he 
was  sent  to  the  famous  Jesuit  College  at  St. 
Omer's,  France,  where  the  Fathers  were  so  deeply 
impressed  by  his  virtue  and  ability  that  after  a 
time  he  was,  says  Anthony  a  Wood,  "  earnestly 
invited  to  take  upon  him  the  habit "  of  the 
Society.  Eminently  fitting  would  it  have  seemed 
for  a  Habington  to  enter  that  Company  of  Jesus, 
whose  aims  and  dangers  the  family  had  shared  in 
England,  but  human  destinies  will  "e'en  gang 
their  ain  gate."  William,  apparently  uncertain 
of  his  vocation,  "by  excuses  got  free  and  left 
them,"  passing  on  to  continue  his  studies  in 
Paris.  And,  as  the  final  decision  was  against  the 
apostolate,  he  returned  to  England,  where  "  being 
then  at  man's  estate,"  Wood  tells  us  "he  was 
instructed  at  home  in  matters  of  history  by  his 
father,  and  became  an  accomplished  gentleman." 
It  could  not  have  been  so  very  long  after  this 
that  Habington  met  Lucy  Herbert,  youngest 
daughter  of  the  Baron  Powis,  and  his  vita  nuova 
dawned.  "  I  found,"  he  subsequently  wrote,  "  that 
Oratory  was  dombe  when  it  began  to  speak  her, 
and  wonder  ...  a  lethargic."  His  ingenuous 
little  character  sketch  of  "A  Mistris  "  (prefixed  to 
Castara)  gives  a  more  detailed  description  of  this 
"fairest  treasure  the  avarice  of  love  can  covet"  : 
"  She  is  chaste.  .  ,  .  She  is  as  fair  as  Nature  in- 
tended her,  helpt  perhaps  to  a  more  pleasing  grace 
by  the  sweetness  of  education,  not  by  the  slight  of 
Art.  .  .  .  She  is  young.  .  .  .  She  is  innocent 
even  from  the  knowledge  of  sinne.  .  .  .  She  is 
not  proud.  ...  In  her  carriage  she  is  sober,  and 
thinkes  her  youth  expresseth  life  enough,  without 
the  giddy  motion  fashion  of  late  hath  taken  up. 
She  dances  to  the  best  applause,  but  doates  not 
on  the  vanity  of  it.  ...  She  sings,  but  not 


22  THE  POETS'  CHANTRY 

perpetually,  for  she  knows  silence  in  woman  is  the 
most  persuading  oratorie.  She  never  arrived  at 
so  much  familiarity  with  man  as  to  know  the 
diminutive  of  his  name,  and  call  him  by  it.  ... 
She  is  never  sad,  and  yet  not  jiggish.  .  .  . 
She  is  not  ambitious  to  be  prais'd  and  yet  values 
death  beneath  infamy." 

But  Habington  was  not  to  find  this  Rose  of  the 
World  altogether  without  its  thorns.  His  family, 
although  an  eminent  one,  was  scarcely  a  mate  for 
the  Herberts  or  the  Percys,  whose  blood  was 
mingled  in  "  Castara's "  veins;  and  his  worldly 
fortunes  were  doubtless  far  inferior  to  those  of 
other  suitors.  But  there  was  something  in  the 
grave,  cultured  grace  of  this  young  student  to 
which  the  lady  could  not  be  indifferent.  More- 
over, his  unfaltering  assurances  that  they  were 
created  for  each  other  had  a  persuasive  power 
quite  their  own.  William  Habington  knew  how 
to  love:  and  he  told  his  story  in  a  series  of  poems 
so  severely  pure  and  so  exquisitely  tender  that,  in 
in  addition  to  winning  the  heart  of  Lucy  Herbert, 
they  won  him  a  place  among  the  makers  of 
English  literature. 

Very  little  did  he  dream  of  this  latter  result  as 
he  penned  the  praises  of  his  well-beloved  : 

Let  all  the  amorous  Youth,  whose  faire  desire 

Felt  never  warmth  but  from  a  noble  fire, 

Bring  hither  their  bright  flames  :  which  here  shall  shine 

As  tapers  fixt  about  Castara's  shrine. 

While  I,  the  Priest,  my  untam'd  heart  surprise, 

And  in  this  Temple  make't  her  sacrifice.    .    .    . 

Thus  characteristically  does  the  little  volume 
open ;  and  from  its  first  part  we  learn  the  story  of 
that  somewhat  chequered  courtship.  There  is  a 
charming  little  poem,  "  To  Castara,  Praying"; 
another  to  the  same  "  Softly  Singing  to  Her 


WILLIAM   HABINGTON  23 

Selfe."  And  as  evidence  that,  with  all  her  rare 
discretion,  Lucy  Herbert  was  still  a  very  woman, 
Habington  has  left  some  beautiful  verses  "To 
Castara,  Inquiring  why  I  loved  her."  "  Why," 
he  retorts, 

Why  doth  the  stubborne  iron  prove 
So  gentle  to  th'  magnetique  stone  ? 
How  know  you  that  the  orbs  do  move  ; 
With  musicke  too  ?     Since  heard  of  none  ? 
And  I  will  answer  why  I  love. 

But  not  unnaturally,  the  young  poet  was  keenly 
sensitive  to  the  opposition  of  Castara's  family.  In 
lines  addressed  to  her  "right  honourable"  mother, 
he  impetuously  wishes  that  his  high-born  mistress 
were 

The  daughter  of  some  mountain  cottager, 
Who,  with  his  toils  worne  out,  could  dying  leave 
Her  no  more  dowre,  than  what  she  did  receive 
From  bounteous  Nature. 

A  few  pages  further  on  we  find  him  boldly 
asserting  that 

Parents'  lawes  must  bear  no  weight 
When  they  happinesse  prevent. 

But  the  lady  was  too  dutiful  to  heed  such  ques- 
tionable doctrine,  and  was  finally  induced  to  leave 
town  for  Seymors,  on  the  Thames.  Habington — 
after  the  manner  of  disconsolate  lovers — composed 
a  number  of  poems  lamenting  her  absence,  im- 
mortalising "a  trembling  kisse"  stolen  at  the 
moment  of  departure,  and  be-rating  his  friends  for 
their  philosophical  advice.  Then,  very  sensibly, 
he  followed  her. 

Subsequent  titles — "To  Castara,  being  debarr'd 
her  presence,"  and  "  To  the  Dew,  In  hope  to  see 


24  THE  POETS'  CHANTRY 

Castara  walking  " — usher  in  the  pastoral  phase  of 
their  romance.  Under  the  u  kinde  shadow"  of 
some  friendly  tree,  or  on  the  banks  of  the 
"courteous  Thames,"  the  old  vows  were  once 
more  repeated.  And  love  had  grown  strong  and 
brave  during  those  months  of  probation — far  too 
strong  to  fear  what  the  hand  of  man  could  do. 
The  young  lovers  had  passed  their  Purgatory,  and 
now  at  last  the  gates  of  Paradise  were  yielding 
before  them. 

Yet  are  we  so  by  Love  refin'd, 
From  impure  drosse  we  are  all  mind. 
Death  could  not  more  have  conquer'd  sense, 

Habington  wrote  in  the  climax  of  his  great  joy. 
A  touch  of  the  unearthly,  a  certain  kinship  with 
the  angels,  tempered  his  most  ardent  moments : 
and  it  is  this  spiritual  element,  more  than  any 
other,  which  has  separated  his  songs  from  the 
somewhat  u  madding  crowd"  of  Cupid's  votaries. 
The  marriage  of  the  poet  and  his  Castara  was 
celebrated  some  time  between  1630  and  1633 — one 
cannot  be  certain  of  the  exact  date.  And  that  it 
was  an  ideal  one,  the  second  part  of  the  poem 
testifies.  It  would  seem  that  Lord  Powis  was  to 
the  last  unyielding,  for  one  of  the  finest  of  these 
compositions  implores  his  parental  blessing  as 
the  one  thing  needful  to  their  happiness : 

'Ere  th'  astonisht  Spring 
Heard  in  the  ayre  the  feather'd  people  sing, 
Ere  time  had  motion,  or  the  Sunne  obtain'd 
His  province  o'er  the  day,  this  was  ordain'd, 

declares  the  intrepid  bridegroom.  And  surely  the 
most  obdurate  of  fathers  could  scarcely  be  un- 
moved by  such  a  plea,  ending  as  it  does  with  the 
assurance : 


WILLIAM  HABINGTON 25 

To  me 
There's  nought  beyond  this.    The  whole  world  is  she. 

To  just  what  extent  Castara's  worth  was  "above 
rubies  "  Habington  has  not  left  us  ignorant.  A 
second  prose  portrait,  this  time  of  "A  Wife,"  is 
inserted  among  the  poems  ;  and,  reading  it,  one 
scarcely  marvels  that  he  calls  her  "  the  sweetest  part 
in  the  harmony  of  our  being."  "  She  is,"  he  writes, 
"  so  true  a  friend,  her  Husband  may  to  her  com- 
municate even  his  ambitions,  and  if  successe 
crowne  not  expectation,  remains  neverthelesse  un- 
contemned.  She  is  colleague  with  him  in  the 
Empire  of  prosperity  ;  and  a  safe  retyring  place 
when  adversity  exiles  him  from  the  World.  .  .  . 
She  is  inquisitive  only  of  new  wayes  to  please 
him,  and  her  wit  sayles  by  no  other  compasse 
than  that  of  his  direction.  She  looks  upon  him 
as  Conjurors  upon  the  Circle,  beyond  which  there 
is  nothing  but  Death  and  Hell ;  and  in  him  she 
believes  Paradise  circumscrib'd.  His  virtues  are 
her  wonder  and  imitation  ;  and  his  errors  her 
credulite  thinkes  no  more  frailtie  than  makes  him 
descend  to  the  title  of  Man."  So,  if  Habington 
did  not  cease  to  be  a  lover  when  he  became  a  hus- 
band, the  credit  was  possibly  not  all  his  own. 

During  those  early  years  of  his  married  life  the 
poet  seems  to  have  felt  an  almost  excessive  shrink- 
ing from  public  activity.  Political  struggles  had 
brought  his  family  very  near  to  shipwreck  in  the 
old  days,  and  he  had  slight  wish  to  venture  upon 
the  stormy  main.  For  although  there  was  no 
active  persecution  under  King  Charles,  Catholics 
knew  full  well  that  they  were  merely  tolerated  in 
England,  and  their  wisdom  lay  in  much  quiet- 
ness. It  is  doubtful,  too,  if  Habington  chafed 
greatly  under  this  restraint.  The  peaceful  tender- 
ness of  his  life  with  Castara  is  reflected  in  poem 


26 THE  POETS'  CHANTRY 

after  poem  ;  he  writes  of  her  "  Being  Sicke,"  then 
of  her  recovery  ;  and  on  the  first  anniversary  of 
their  marriage  he  compares  their  passion  to  the 

sunlicrht.- 


sunlight, 


Which  had  increast,  but  that,  by  love's  decree 
'Twas  such  at  first,  it  ne'er  could  greater  be  ! 

In  the  course  of  time  two  children  were  born 
to  them — Thomas  and  Catherine — of  whom,  un- 
fortunately, we  know  little.  But  such  glimpses 
of  the  home  life  as  do  reach  us  make  lines  like  the 
following,  with  all  their  breath  of  the  lotus  flower, 
entirely  comprehensible  : 

Though  with  larger  sail 
Some  dance  upon  the  Ocean,  yet  more  fraile 
And  faithlesse  is  that  wave  than  where  we  glide. 
.  .  .  And  cause  our  boat 

Dares  not  affront  the  weather,  we'll  ne'er  float 
Farre  from  the  shore. 

Another  and  very  amiable  side  of  Habington's 
character  is  revealed  in  his  friendship  with  George 
Talbot,  brother  of  the  Earl  of  Shrewsbury.  These 
two  cousins  had  been  close  friends  from  child- 
hood. Both  had  known  the  culture  of  ua  liberall 
education,"  and  both  developed  into  men  of 
severely  high  and  noble  nature.  Looking  back 
after  Talbot's  death,  Habington  thought  that  his 
friend  had  inherited  "the  vertues  of  all  his 
progenitors"  ;  and  he  mused  lovingly  how  frank 
and  open  had  been  his  speech,  yet  how  faithful 
his  guarding  of  another's  secret ;  how  he  was 
''absolute  governor,  no  destroyer  of  his  pas- 
sions," and  so  generous  that  he  could  for- 
give an  injury.  As  for  Talbot,  he  had  declared,  in 
verses  to  his  "best  friend  and  kinsman  William 


WILLIAM   HABINGTON  27 

Habington,"  the  absolute  unity  "  in  blood  as 
study  "  between  them,  and  that  their  sole  conten- 
tion was  "who  should  be  best  patterne  of  a 
friend."  Castara  herself,  it  would  seem,  did  not 
replace  this  older  companionship ;  since  in  the 
very  midst  of  his  courtship  Habington  found  time 
to  reproach  Talbot  for  an  absence  of  three  days. 
But  the  bond  was  destined — ("Love's  the  am- 
bassador of  loss") — to  be  the  means  of  a  mighty 
sorrow  when  the  hand  of  Death  fell  precipitately 
upon  the  vigorous  manhood  of  his  friend.  For 
ten  days  Habington  was  speechless  with  grief. 
Then  he  sought  relief  in  the  touching  "Elegies" 
which  add  a  new  solemnity  to  the  1635  edition  of 
Castara.  They  are  eight  in  number,  perhaps  the 
most  powerful  being  the  second  : 

Talbot  is  dead.  Like  lightning  which  no  part 
O'  th'  body  touches,  but  first  strikes  the  heart, 
This  word  hath  murder'd  me.  .  .  . 

No  man  can  look  straight  into  the  eyes  of  Death 
without  having  his  aspect  of  Life  metamorphosed. 
After  that  year,  1634,  William  Habington  was  no 
longer  the  weaver  of  delicious  day  dreams,  the 
tireless  singer  of  Castara's  praises.  He  was  her 
faithful  and  devoted  husband  ;  but  that  was  not 
all.  In  the  studious  repose  of  Hindlip  Hill  we 
find  the  quondam  poet  giving  himself  more 
and  more  to  historical  research.  He  produced 
— in  collaboration  with  his  father — a  History  of 
Edward  IV,  King  of  England,  which  was  pub- 
lished in  1640  "at  the  desire  of  K.  Charles  I." 
That  same  year  saw  the  appearance  of  his  Queene 
of  A  rr agon,  a  tragi-comedy  of  considerable  merit, 
which  the  Earl  of  Pembroke  "caused  to  be  acted 
at  Court  and  afterwards  to  be  published  against 
the  author's  will."  One  little  dialogue  in  this 


28  THE  POETS'  CHANTRY 

play  takes  on  particular  interest  from  the  tradition 
of  Habington's  Republican  sympathies.  It  is  the 
following  : 

The  stars  shoot 

An  equal  influence  on  the  open  cottage 
Where  the  poor  shepherd's  child  is  rudely  nurs'd, 
And  on  the  cradle  where  the  prince  is  rock'd 
With  care  and  whisper. 

And  what  hence  infer  you  ? 

That  no  distinction  is  'tween  man  and  man 
But  as  his  virtues  add  to  him  a  glory, 
Or  vices  cloud  him. 

These  sentiments  may  or  may  not  have  been 
personal  with  the  author  ;  but  when  one  recalls 
the  Royalist  doctrine  of  Divine  Right,  and  even 
Cromwell's  frank  predilection  for  a  "  gentleman," 
one  perceives  how  radical  their  tenor  really  was. 

Popular  opinion  has  all  too  readily  imputed  to 
the  Puritans  of  that  day  a  monopoly  of  English 
piety :  but  the  intensity,  the  austerity  of  Habing- 
ton's later  poems  might,  if  better  known,  serve 
as  a  wholesome  corrective.  The  third  part  of 
Castara,  issued  in  1639-40,  has  comparatively 
little  in  common  with  the  earlier  pages.  Its 
poems,  composed  mainly  upon  Scriptural  texts, 
possess  a  solemnity,  a  detachment  that  is  most 
impressive.  From  a  man  like  Habington,  in- 
deed, it  is  even  alarming  !  All  trace  of  the  youth- 
ful lover,  who  caught  the  sound  of  Castara's 
name  in  the  brook's  "  harmonious  murmures,"  or 
fancied  Cupid  buried  in  the  dimple  of  her  cheek, 
has  disappeared.  The  intense  seriousness  of  life, 
the  mutability  of  human  joys,  man's  high  destiny 
and  the  dread  alternative  of  Hell — these  are  now 
the  poet's  themes.  We  have  earlier  referred  to 


WILLIAM  HABINGTON  29 

Habington's  custom  of  inserting  prose  sketches 
which  strike  the  keynote  of  the  various  poems : 
at  first  it  was  the  "  Mistris"  ;  then  the  "  Wife"  ; 
still  later,  the  "  Friend."  But  for  this  Third  Part 
was  reserved  the  most  famous  of  all,  his  vision  of 
"A  Holy  Man."  It  seems  a  thousand  pities  to 
mar  the  continuity  of  this  study,  so  wise,  so  sane, 
so  full  of  austere  beauty,  by  a  mere  extract ;  but 
the  whole  is  too  long  to  quote.  The  Holy  Man 
alone,  declares  Habington,  is  truly  happy : 

"  In  prosperity  he  gratefully  admires  the  bounty 
of  the  Almighty  giver,  and  useth,  not  abuseth, 
plenty :  but  in  adversity  he  remaines  unshaken, 
and  like  some  eminent  mountain  hath  his  head 
above  the  clouds.  .  .  .  Fame  he  weighes  not,  but 
esteemes  a  smoake,  yet  such  as  carries  with  it  the 
sweetest  odour,  and  riseth  usually  from  the 
Sacrifice  of  our  best  actions."  There  is  no  trace 
of  self-righteousness  in  this  little  sermon;  "for 
seldome,"  says  the  preacher,  "the  folly  we  con- 
demne  is  so  culpable  as  the  severity  of  our  judg- 
ment. .  .  .  To  live  he  knowes  a  benefit,  and  the 
contempt  of  it  ingratitude,  but  .  .  .  Death,  how 
deformed  soever  an  aspect  it  weares,  he  is  not 
frighted  with  ;  since  it  not  annihilates  but  un- 
cloudes  the  soule." 

There  would  seem  to  be  more  than  a  superficial 
significance  in  this  change  of  Habington's  mental 
attitude.  Was  the  weight  of  six  additional  years, 
the  maturing  of  a  deeply  serious  nature,  even  the 
death  of  George  Talbot,  sufficient  explanation  of 
it?  Or  did,  perhaps,  dreams  of  a  lost  vocation 
haunt  the  soul  of  the  poet?  Only  his  God  (and 
possibly  his  Castara)  could  know  what  chastening 
hand  had  rested  upon  that  heart.  For,  surely,  it 
was  not  in  the  school  of  ease  or  joy  or  human 
consolation  that  Habington  learned  to  write  lines 
like  those  which  close  his 


30  THE  POETS'  CHANTRY 

My  God  !     If  'tis  thy  great  decree 
That  this  must  the  last  moment  be 

Wherein  I  breathe  this  ayre — 
My  heart  obeyes,  joy'd  to  retreate 
From  the  false  favours  of  the  great 

And  treachery  of  the  faire. 


For  in  the  fire  when  Ore  is  tryed, 
And  by  that  torment  purified  ; 
Doe  we  deplore  the  losse  ? 
And  when  thou  shalt  my  soule  refine, 
That  it  thereby  may  purer  shine, 
Shall  I  grieve  for  the  drosse? 

Of  Habington's  last  years,  which  were  passed 
amid  much  turmoil,  few  details  have  survived.  In 
1641  appeared  the  last  of  his  published  works, 
Observations  upon  Historic;  the  next  year  saw 
England  dark  with  the  smoke  of  her  Civil  War.  His 
love  of  freedom  must  have  rendered  him  a  Royalist 
with  reservations,  yet  with  the  fanaticism  of  the 
reformers  he  could  have  had  no  part.  If  there 
was  one  word  which  fired  every  spark  of  Puritan 
wrath  and  Puritan  fanaticism,  that  word  was 
Popery.  Very  serviceable  at  all  times  has  a 
scapegoat  been  found  ;  and  the  Parliamentary 
proclamation  which  declared  Catholicism  respon- 
sible for  the  sins  and  afflictions  of  Protestant 
England  are  not  without  their  own  grim  humour. 
"  Under  such  circumstances,"  says  Dr.  Lingard, 
"the  Catholics  found  themselves  exposed  to  insult 
and  persecution  wherever  the  influence  of  the 
Parliament  extended :  for  protection  they  were 
compelled  to  flee  to  the  quarters  of  the  Royalists, 
and  to  fight  under  their  banners  ;  and  this  again 
confirmed  the  prejudice  against  them,  and  exposed 
them  to  additional  obloquy  and  punishment." 


WILLIAM  HABINGTON  31 

William  Habington,  says  Anthony  a  Wood,  "did 
then  run  with  the  times,  and  was  not  unknown  to 
Oliver  the  Usurper  " — words  so  ambiguous  that 
one  longs  to  call  the  old  Oxford  chronicler  back 
from  his  grave  to  give  an  explanation. 

Very  precious,  too,  would  be  some  news  of 
Lucy  Habington  during  those  "  evil  days."  But 
nothing  is  clear  save  the  one  ultimate  fact 
of  the  poet's  history.  On  13  November,  1654, 
at  the  beginning  of  his  fiftieth  year,  William 
Habington  died.  His  body  was  laid  to  rest  in 
the  old  vault  at  Hindlip,  by  the  side  of  his  father 
and  his  grandfather  :  and  not  improbably  close 
also  to  his  beloved  Castara. 

Habington's  historical  works  are  scarcely  read 
to-day,  being  supplanted  by  more  recent  research  ; 
although  we  have  Edward  Phillips'  word  that, 
twenty  years  after  our  author's  death,  his  Historic 
of  Edward  IV.  was  better  known  than  his  Cas- 
tara. The  Queene  of  Arragon,  also,  was  rather 
highly  esteemed  by  his  contemporaries,  being  re- 
vived during  the  Restoration.  In  its  Prologue, 
Habington  declares  the  language  of  this  drama  to 
be  "  easy,  such  as  fell  unstudied  from  his  pen  " — 
an  assertion  the  reader  will  be  tempted  to  take 
cum  grano  salt's.  As  might  be  expected,  there  is 
a  great  deal  of  beauty  in  the  love  passages,  and 
a  certain  loftiness  of  tone  throughout.  Its  charac- 
terisation, especially  in  the  case  of  Cleantha,  is 
charged  with  vivacity.  "  Madam,"  observes  this 
sprightly  beauty,  whose  wit  is  almost  worthy  to 
rival  the  immortal  Beatrice  : 

Madam, 

I  have  many  servants,  but  not  one  so  valiant 

As  dares  attempt  to  marry  me  ! 

But  after  all,  it  is  as  a  lyric  poet  that  William 


32  THE  POETS'  CHANTRY 

Habington  must  stand  or  fall:  although  he  him- 
self took  poetry  with  slight  seriousness.  "I 
never  set  so  high  a  rate  upon  it  as  to  give  my- 
selfe  entirely  up  to  its  devotion,"  he  once  wrote 
casually ;  and,  of  course,  in  the  seventeenth  cen- 
tury such  an  attitude  was  by  no  means  unusual. 
Poetry  was  considered  less  as  a  vocation  than  as  a 
graceful  accomplishment,  and  Milton  himself  laid 
aside  its  composition  during  those  twenty  strenu- 
ous years  from  1640  to  1660.  So,  like  Donne  and 
others,  Habington  permitted  his  verses  to  pass 
about  in  private  circulation  until  "  importunity 
prevailed  and  cleere  judgements  advis'd "  the 
more  permanent  form  of  a  printed  volume.  Then 
in  1634,  Castara  was  anonymously  published,  with 
the  author's  half-playful  assertion  that  "  to  write 
this,  love  stole  some  hours  from  businesse  and 
my  more  serious  study."  The  verses  (which 
appeared  almost  simultaneously  with  Milton's 
Comus)  met  with  such  success  that  a  second 
edition  was  called  for  during  the  following  year, 
and  a  third — with  additions — in  1640.  Since  then, 
Castara  has  been  little  known  to  readers  in  gene- 
ral, and  by  the  critics  little  praised.  Habington, 
as  we  know,  was  a  poet  only  when  some  strong 
emotion — love  or  grief  or  religious  longing — cast 
off  the  bonds  of  habitual  reserve  and  freed  the 
wings  of  fancy.  In  such  moments  he  must  be 
judged  ;  and,  because  those  moments  were  rare, 
he  cannot  be  placed  among  poets  of  the  first 
order.  Yet  none  could  fail  to  feel  the  exquisite 
beauty  and  sincerity  of  those  lines,  beginning  : 

We  saw  and  woo'd  each  other's  eyes, 
My  soule  contracted  then  with  thine, 
And  both  burnt  in  one  sacrifice, 
By  which  our  marriage  grew  divine. 

They   are    among    the    most    characteristic    that 


WILLIAM   HABINGTON  33 

Habington  wrote.  But,  perhaps,  equally  charm- 
ing in  its  way,  and  with  a  sweet,  frank  ingenuous- 
ness that  recalls  the  lyrics  of  Elizabeth's  own 
day,  is  the  little  poem,  "  Upon  Castara's  Depar- 
ture "  : 

Vows  are  vaine.     No  suppliant  breath 
Stayes  the  speed  of  swift-heel'd  death. 
Life  with  her  is  gone  and  I 
Learne  but  a  new  way  to  dye. 
See  the  flowers  condole,  and  all 
Wither  in  my  funerall. 
The  bright  Lilly,  as  if  day 
Parted  with  her,  fades  away. 
Violets  hang  their  heads,  and  lose 
All  their  beauty.     That  the  Rose 
A  sad  part  in  sorrow  beares, 
Witnesse  all  those  dewy  teares  ; 
Which  as  Pearle  or  Dyamond  like 
Swell  upon  her  blushing  cheeke. 
All  things  mourne,  but  oh,  behold 
How  the  wither'd  Marigold 
Closeth  up  now  she  is  gone, 
Judging  her  the  setting  Sunne. 

In  delicacy  and  chastity  of  imagination,  in  ten- 
derness of  sentiment,  and  in  a  certain  even  felicity 
of  verse,  Castara  has  had  few  rivals.  After  the 
fashion  of  its  own  age,  it  may  be  said  to  have 
accomplished  very  much  what  Coventry  Patmore 
achieved  in  The  Angel  in  the  House — the  glorifica- 
tion of  domestic  love. 

Habington's  religious  poems  form  a  curious 
contrast  to  those  of  Richard  Crashaw,  which  ap- 
peared only  five  years  later.  They  have  scarcely 
a  trace  of  the  younger  poet's  ecstasy  of  joy  and 
tenderness,  nor  of  his  lyric  melody.  But  they 
have  the  solemnity  of  far-off  organ  music,  and 
sometimes  "  heart-perturbing  "  echoes  of  the  Dies 
Irae  seem  floating  through  the  lines  : 
D 


34 THE  POETS'  CHANTRY 

Eternitie  !  when  I  think  thee, 
(Which  never  any  end  must  have, 
Nor  knew'st  beginning)  and  fore-see 
Hell  is  designed  for  sinne  a  grave, 

My  frightened  flesh  trembles  to  dust, 
My  blood  ebbes  fearefully  away  : 
Both  guilty  that  they  did  to  lust 
And  vanity  my  youth  betray. 

William  Habington  lived  in  the  decadence  of  a 
great  age,  the  Golden  Age  of  English  literature. 
He  was  a  lad  of  eleven  years  when  Shakespeare 
was  carried  to  his  grave.  He  was  writing  pre- 
fatory verses  for  one  of  Shirley's  dramas  as  early 
as  1629 — and  for  the  Beaumont  and  Fletcher  folio 
as  late  as  1647.  But  there  is  a  directness,  a  sim- 
plicity in  his  verse  very  rare  among  his  contem- 
poraries. Neither  the  overwrought  fancies  of  the 
Italian  School,  nor  the  subtlety  and  perversityof 
the  so-called  ''Metaphysical"  poets,  would  seem 
to  have  touched  him  appreciably.  Perhaps  that 
insistent  moderation  which  hampered  Habington 
when  he  would  scale  the  heights  of  lyric  beauty, 
saved  him,  also,  from  the  vices  of  his  age.  For 
in  his  literary,  as  in  his  private  life,  the  man's 
soul  was  "like  a  star  and  dwelt  apart."  A  modest 
star  it  was,  yet  one  from  which  others  have  taken 
light  for  their  pathway.  It  is  impossible,  for  ex- 
ample, to  read  his  lines  on  "The  Grave,"  without 
being  conscious  that  they  contain,  as  it  were  in 
embryo,  almost  the  whole  of  Gray's  immortal 
Elegy. 

Professor  Saintsbury  has  remarked  that  our 
poet's  work  is  •"  invaluable  as  showing  the  counter- 
side  to  Milton,  the  Catholic  Puritanism  which 
is  no  doubt  inherent  in  the  English  nature."  A 
very  just  criticism,  although  the  word  purity 
might  advantageously  be  substituted  for  Puritan- 


WILLIAM   HABINGTON  35 

ism.  While  by  no  means  devoid  of  humour — 
surely  not  of  satire,  when  occasion  required — 
Habington  was  pre-eminently  a  man  of  high  seri- 
ousness. And  his  poems  are  essentially  a  part 
of  himself.  They  reveal  a  nature  too  proud  to 
stoop  to  any  littleness,  yet  too  gentle  for  bigotry 
or  censoriousness  ;  a  character  wherein  learning 
had  been  tempered  and  vitalised  by  the  power  of 
love,  and  the  graces  of  life  flourished  but  as 
blossoms  of  some  Paradisal  fruit.  George  Talbot 
was  nowise  blinded  by  friendship  when  he  wrote 
that  affectionate  little  preface  to  Castara  : 

.  .  .   Beyond  your  state 
May  be  a  prouder,  not  a  happier  Fate. 
I  write  not  this  in  hope  t'incroach  on  fame, 
Or  adde  a  greater  lustre  to  your  name, 
Bright  in  itselfe  enough     . 

But  I  who  know 

Thy  soule  religious  to  her  ends,  where  grow 
No  sinnes  by  art  or  custome,  boldly  can 
Stile  thee  more  than  good  Poet,  a  good  man. 

For  we  to-day  can  reach  no  truer  estimate. 


RICHARD    CRASHAW 

AMAZING  as  is  the  fecundity  of  Nature — which 
sets  an  orchid  beckoning  to  us  from  the  dry  bark 
of  a  fallen  tree,  or  the  delicate  edelweiss  amid  the 
silent  Alpine  summits — History  has  equal  pheno- 
mena. For  History,  too,  has  blossomed  "in 
purple  and  red  "  down  many  a  stony  highway,  up 
many  a  forgotten  and  thorn-choked  by-path.  One 
of  these  gracious  miracles  has  been  the  persistence 
of  the  Catholic  note  in  English  poetry,  with  all  the 
powers  of  this  world  uniting  to  drown  and  silence 
it.  One  can  scarcely  conjure  up  a  less  promising 
soil  for  things  Catholic  than  England  of  the  late 
sixteenth  and  middle  seventeenth  centuries  ;  yet  it 
is  a  sober  fact  that  the  most  intensely  religious 
poets  of  both  these  eras  were  of  the  Old  Faith. 
The  latter  part  of  Elizabeth's  reign  was  so  barren 
in  devotional  poetry  that  the  palm  goes  quite 
unhesitatingly  to  the  martyred  Robert  Southwell ; 
and  his  successor's  claim,  although  on  more  dis- 
puted ground,  is  not  less  assured. 

For  Richard  Crashaw,  if,  possibly,  less  of  an 
apostle  than  Father  Southwell,  was  even  more  of 
a  poet — so  deeply  and  transcendently  a  poet  that, 
in  his  own  field,  he  need  fear  comparison  with  no 
English  lyrist,  save  perhaps  only  one,  before  or 
since.  Yet  from  a  strange  and  troublous  back- 
ground his  picture  stands  out.  On  one  side  was 
the  Established  Church  ;  recognised  as  so  much 
the  bulwark  of  conservative  English  policies  that 
Charles  I.  lose  up,  when  about  to  receive  the  sac- 
rament from  Archbishop  Usher,  to  declare  publicly 

36 


RICHARD  CRASHAW 37 

his  intention  of  maintaining  "the  true  reformed 
Protestant  religion  as  it  stood  in  its  beauty  in  the 
happy  days  of  Queen  Elizabeth."  On  the  other 
hand  was  Puritanism — a  tremendous  force  in 
national  affairs,  a  leaven  of  good  and  of  evil 
through  every  class  of  English  society.  Both  sides 
could  point  to  their  representative  poets  :  good 
poets  for  the  Establishment,  one  great  poet  for  the 
Dissenters ;  all  of  whom  the  world  has  remem- 
bered. But  it  is  not  for  the  fervour  and  intensity 
of  their  religious  emotion  that  the  world  remembers 
Milton,  or  Cowley,  or  even  Herbert.  And  yet 
the  fire  of  sincerest  devotional  poetry  did  burn 
on  through  this  somewhat  frigid  time,  tended 
with  all  devotion  by  its  gentle  high-priest ;  nor 
did  the  light  and  warmth  of  it  fail  to  guide 
Crashaw  back  to  its  true  altar-source,  the  Catholic 
faith. 

Students  of  heredity  may  find  the  usual  discrep- 
ancies in  the  poet's  story.  His  father,  William 
Crashaw,  was  a  clergyman  and  scholar  of  pro- 
nounced Puritan  tendencies  ;  very  active  in  the 
production  of  "Romish  Forgeries  and  Falsifi- 
cations," and  Anti-Jesuit  treatises  in  general.  His 
imagination  ran  also  into  the  fields  of  poetry  ;  his 
most  interesting  work  (to  us)  being  a  "  Complaint 
or  Dialogue  betwixt  the  Soule  and  Body  of  a 
damned  man.  Supposed  to  be  written  by  St. 
Bernard."  These  literary  labours  do  not  seem, 
however,  to  have  brought  much  remuneration,  for 
we  find  Queen  Elizabeth  once  proposing  the  elder 
Crashaw  for  a  Cambridge  fellowship,  having 
learned  of  his  "  povertie  and  yet  otherwise  good 
qualities."  Richard  was  born  in  London  in  the 
year  1612-13  ;  and  one  of  the  pathetic  incidents  of 
his  life  is  its  almost  entire  lack  of  a  mother's 
understanding  love.  Just  when  she  died  is  not 
known — nor,  in  fact,  who  she  was ;  but,  as  early 


38  THE  POETS'  CHANTRY 

as  1620,  Archbishop  Usher  preached  the  funeral 
sermon  over  William  Crashaw's  second  wife, 
praising  her,  one  is  happy  to  read,  for  "her  sin- 
gular motherly  affection  to  the  child  of  her  prede- 
cessor." Of  the  subsequent  life  in  this  austere 
Puritan  home  few  details  have  come  down  ;  we 
know  that  Richard  was  educated  at  the  Charter- 
house on  the  nomination  of  two  nobles,  friends  of 
his  father ;  and  that  the  latter  died  in  1626.  But 
for  the  most  part  his  boyhood  is  a  blank. 

It  is  at  Cambridge  University,  where  Crashaw 
entered  in  1631,  that  the  first  clear  light  is  thrown 
upon  his  life.  The  loneliness  of  his  youth  was 
over  at  last ;  and  here,  in  the  more  friendly  High 
Church  atmosphere,  among  friends  and  tutors  alike 
congenial,  the  poet's  nature  blossomed  out  like  a 
flower  in  the  sunshine.  The  death  of  two  fellow- 
students  called  from  him  a  number  of  graceful 
laments,  and  he  contributed  several  occasional 
poems  in  Latin  to  the  University  collections — a 
significant  but  scarcely  phenomenal  achievement 
for  the  undergraduate  of  those  days. 

In  1634,  probably  his  twenty-first  or  twenty- 
second  year,  something  more  notable  occurred  : 
the  University  Press  published  (anonymously)  his 
remarkable  Epigrammatum  Sacrorum  Liber,  con- 
taining nearly  two  hundred  Latin  epigrams, 
including  the  oft-quoted  and  ever-memorable  one 
upon  the  miracle  at  Cana  : 

Nympha  pudica  Deum  vidit  et  erubit ; 

It  was  probably  in  early  youth,  also,  that 
Crashaw  composed  those  charming  "  Wishes  to 
his  (supposed)  Mistress"  : 

Who  e'er  she  be, 

That  not  impossible  she 

That  shall  command  my  heart  and  me  ; 


RICHARD  CRASHAW  39 

Where  e'er  she  lye, 
Lock't  up  from  mortal  eye, 
In  shady  leaves  of  destiny  : 

for  the  ascetic  turn  of  his  mind  soon  banished  even 
the  supposition  of  an  earthly  sweetheart.  Our 
poet's  whole  life  was  a  romance,  but  one  looks  in 
vain  for  any  recorded  love-story. 

In  1636,  the  young  man  passed  to  Peterhouse, 
and  we  must  thank  the  anonymous  editor  of  his 
first  poems  for  many  valuable  details  of  his  life 
there.  "He  was  excellent,"  it  seems,  "in  five 
languages  (besides  his  mother-tongue),  Hebrew, 
Greek,  Latin,  Italian,  Spanish ;  the  two  last 
whereof  were  his  own  acquisition."  Among 
Crashaw's  other  accomplishments,  "as  well  pious 
as  harmless,"  he  mentions  music,  drawing,  and 
graving;  and  makes  comments  upon  his  "  rare 
moderation  in  diet."  The  poet's  religious  life 
during  these  years  seems  to  have  been  almost 
monastic.  Once  again  let  us  turn  to  the  editor's 
picturesque  words:  "  In  the  temple  of  God,  under 
his  wing,  he  led  his  life  in  St.  Mary's  Church, 
near  St.  Peter's  College  ;  there  he  lodged  under 
Tertullian's  roof  of  angels  ;  there  he  made  his 
nest  more  gladly  than  David's  swallow  near  the 
House  of  God  ;  where,  like  a  primitive  saint,  he 
offered  more  prayers  in  the  night  than  others 
usually  offer  in  the  day."  There  was  very  little  of 
earth  in  this  life  at  Peterhouse  ;  but  his  poems — 
many  of  them  composed  in  the  quiet  chapel — show 
how  much  of  Heaven.  Lines  like  these  speak  for 
themselves : 

Each  of  us  his  lamb  will  bring1, 

Each  his  pair  of  silver  doves  ; 

Till  burnt  at  last  in  fire  of  Thy  fair  eyes, 

Ourselves  become  our  own  best  sacrifice. 


4Q  THE  POETS'  CHANTRY 

A  subsequent  editor  (the  Rev.  George  Gilfillan) 
asserts  that  Crashaw  "  entered,  but  in  what  year 
is  uncertain,  on  holy  orders,  and  became  an  ardent 
and  powerful  preacher."  Undoubtedly  he  did 
contemplate  such  a  step,  but  there  is  no  conclu- 
sive evidence  that  it  was  taken.  The  increasing 
sway  of  Puritanism  in  the  English  Church  would 
naturally  repel  and  unsettle  him ;  moreover,  about 
this  time  many  causes  were  uniting  to  lead  him  to 
a  more  Catholic  outlook.  One  of  his  associates 
at  Peterhouse  was  the  gentle  Dr.  Shelford,  whose 
Five  Pious  and  Learned  Discourses  bore  a  prefa- 
tory poem  by  Crashaw.  Both  of  these  souls  pro- 
tested against  the  unloveliness  of  Puritan  worship 
and  the  bitterness  of  Puritan  feeling  ;  they  were 
even  so  radical  as  to  question  whether  considering 
the  Pope  as  Anti-Christ  were  an  essential  point  of 
Faith.  "  Whate'er  it  be,"  said  our  young  poet, 

Whate'er  it  be, 
I'm  sure  it  is  no  point  of  Charitie  ! 

Crashaw  had,  moreover,  acquired  the  habit  of 
riding  over  with  some  frequency  to  Little  Gidding, 
there  to  commune  with  Nicholas  Ferrar  and  his 
ascetic  companions.  This  "  Protestant  Nunnery" 
was  a  rock  of  offence  to  the  Puritans,  but  Richard, 
and  others  of  the  more  devout  Cambridge  men, 
found  in  it  a  very  haven  of  inspiration.  Ferrar's 
household  made  no  pretence  at  being  a  religious 
order  ;  it  was  merely  a  pious  family-community  of 
about  thirty  members  ;  but  the  pervading  atmo- 
sphere was  decidedly  (although  not  avowedly) 
Catholic.  "If  others  knew  what  comfort  God 
had  ministered  to  them  since  their  sequestration," 
Ferrar  used  to  say,  "they  might  take  the  like 
course." 

Meanwhile  the  mystic  lines  of  St.  Teresa  were 
burning  their  way  into  Crashaw's  very  soul.  It 


RICHARD  CRASHAW  41 

would  be  hard,  indeed,  to  over-estimate  the  influ- 
ence of  this  newly-canonised  Spanish  nun,  alike 
upon  his  literary  and  his  spiritual  life,  for  he  seems 
to  have  paid  her  the  devotion  of  a  lover,  a  disciple 
and  a  religious  enthusiast.  Strange  and  awesome 
are  the  ways  by  which  a  soul  draws  near  to  the 
Source  of  Life  ;  one  counts  the  visible  milestones, 
but  dares  only  guess  at  the  mysteries  of  that  inner 
guidance.  So  with  Richard  Crashaw :  not  too 
closely  may  we  trace  the  gradual  steps  which  led 
him  further  and  further  from  his  past,  and  on  to  the 
very  gates  of  Peter's  Stronghold.  Once  there,  he 
paused,  waiting  doubtless  for  strength  to  proceed ; 
like  Dante's  Beatrice,  he  had  "attained  to  look 
upon  the  beginnings  of  peace  " — but  its  consum- 
mation was  not  yet. 

The  cannon  of  the  Civil  War  were  destined  to 
awake  the  dreamer,  cruelly  indeed,  yet  kindly  in 
the  end.  Crashaw  had  woven  the  glory  of  his 
own  visions  about  the  Church  of  England  ;  he 
was  soon  to  see  her  stripped  of  her  beauties.  A 
few  days  before  Christmas,  1643,  Manchester  and 
his  soldiers  began  their  "  reform  "  of  Cambridge, 
and  the  lovely  chapel  there  was  sacked  and  dese- 
crated. One  of  the  official  reports  describes  with 
evident  elation  how  the  Puritans  came  to  Peter- 
house  "with  officers  and  soldiers,"  and  "pulled 
down  two  mighty  great  angells  with  wings,  and 
divers  other  angells,  and  the  foure  Evangelists 
and  Peter  with  his  keyes,  and  divers  superstitious 
letters  in  gold."  A  few  months  later  the  Parlia- 
mentary commissioners  presented  the  Solemn 
League  and  Covenant  to  all  fellows  of  that  Uni- 
versity :  Crashaw  with  four  others  refused  to  sign, 
and  the  little  band  was  formally  ejected.  The 
shock  to  a  nature  like  our  poet's  must  have  been 
terrific — the  very  ground  seemed  cut  from  beneath 
his  feet.  For  twelve  years  Cambridge  had  been 


42  THE  POETS'  CHANTRY 

his  home  ;  now  its  doors  were  closed  to  him  for 
ever.  Worse  than  all,  he  saw  his  Church  impo- 
tent, subservient,  shaken  like  a  very  reed  before 
these  winds  of  new  doctrine.  The  two  following 
years  of  his  life  are  veiled.  He  is  said  to  have 
resided  for  a  while  at  Oxford  University  ;  later  he 
must  have  been  in  London,  where  the  first  edition 
of  his  poems,  Steps  to  the  Temple,  -with  other  De- 
lights to  the  Muses,  was  published  in  1646.  But 
one  event  is  quite  certain — morning  star  of  this 
bitter  night ! — before  leaving  England,  Richard 
Crashaw  had  been  received  into  his  soul's  true 
home.  Thenceforth  he  was  a  Catholic. 

This  step  was,  of  course,  disastrous  to  his 
prospects  in  England.  Even  the  fondly  apprecia- 
tive London  editor  speaks  of  him  as  "now  dead 
to  us  "  ;  and  some  words  of  Prynne's  flung  out 
regarding  Crashaw's  "sinful  and  notorious  apos- 
tasy and  revolt"  show  what  a  passing  over  to 
"  Popery"  meant  to  the  Puritans.  So  the  young 
convert  tried  his  fortunes  for  a  while  in  Paris  ;  and 
there  in  1646  Abraham  Cowley  discovered  him — 
in  poverty,  it  seems,  if  not  actually  in  want. 
Very  touching  is  this  reunion  of  the  former 
college  mates,  both  exiles  now  from  their  disown- 
ing fatherland  ;  and  from  this  time  date  Crashaw's 
modest  little  lines  "  On  Two  Green  Apricocks 
sent  to  Mr.  Cowley."  Very  characteristic,  too, 
is  our  poet's  answer  to  his  friend's  verses  on 
"  Hope."  "  Dear  Hope,"  he  cried  with  wistful 
optimism  : 

Dear  Hope,  by  thee 

We  are  not  where  we  are  nor  what  we  be, 

But  where  and  what  we  would  be  ! 

Moreover  Cowley  (being  officially  connected  with 
the  suite  of  the  exiled  English  Queen,  then  also  in 
Paris)  was  able  to  offer  help  to  his  brother  poet. 


RICHARD  CRASHAW 43 

Henrietta  Maria  received  Crashaw  with  all 
graciousness ;  and  when,  a  few  years  later,  he 
determined  to  visit  Rome,  she  gave  him  intro- 
ductory letters  there.  More  than  this  she  was  no 
longer  able  to  do.  It  is  probable  that  most  of 
Crashaw's  later  poems — those  of  the  Carmen  Deo 
Nostro — were  written  in  the  French  capital.  They 
were  entirely  religious  in  character,  and  Crashaw 
himself  prepared  more  than  half  a  score  of  the 
most  interesting  and  characteristic  illustrations 
for  them  ;  but  their  publication  was  not  till  1652. 
The  dedication  of  this  volume  to  the  Countess  of 
Denbigh  reveals  a  "  friend  and  patron,"  whom  we 
would  gladly  know  better ;  but  even  Dr.  Grosart 
has  been  able  to  discover  little  more  than  that 
she  was  probably  Susan,  the  sister  of  Bucking- 
ham. This  latter  lady  did,  we  know,  eventually 
enter  the  Catholic  Church.  In  one  of  these  poems, 
"Against  Irresolution  in  Matters  of  Religion," 
Crashaw  had  exhorted  her  with  angelic  eloquence 
to  that  step  which  had  cost  himself  so  much. 

About  1648  or  1649,  Crashaw  took  up  his  abode 
in  Italy;  and,  possibly  through  the  influence 
of  Henrietta  Maria,  became  private  secretary  to 
Cardinal  Palotta,  then  Governor  of  Rome.  This 
"  good  Cardinal  "  seems  to  have  won  and  merited 
the  poet's  sincerest  admiration  ;  but  the  official 
life  was  stormy  and  uncongenial.  Dreamer,  mys- 
tic that  he  was,  Crashaw  had  little  place  amid  the 
sin  and  noise  and  conflict  of  the  world.  In  time, 
moreover,  he  discovered  flagrant  corruption  in 
the  Governor's  own  suite,  and  fearlessly  reported 
it.  This  expostulation  appears  to  have  been 
entirely  just,  but  it  drew  upon  the  young  English- 
man's head  the  whole  wrath  of  the  offending 
Italians  ;  and  so  bitter  grew  the  feeling  that 
Cardinal  Palotta  was  obliged  to  find  some  other 
refuge  for  his  protege.  So  the  choice  fell  upon 


44  THE  POETS'  CHANTRY 

the  Loretto,  scene  of  many  a  pious  pilgrimage, 
and  Crashaw  was  appointed  sub-canon  of  the 
basilica  church  there.  This  last  scene  in  the 
dreamer's  human  tragedy  has  been  thus  described 
by  Mr.  Edmund  Gosse  : 

"  We  can  imagine  with  what  feelings  of  rapture 
and  content  the  world-worn  poet  crossed  the 
Apennines  and  descended  to  the  dry  little 
town  above  the  shores  of  the  Adriatic.  .  .  .  As 
he  ascended  the  last  hill,  and  saw  before  him  the 
magnificent  basilica  which  Bramante  had  built  as 
a  shelter  for  the  Holy  House,  he  would  feel  that 
his  feet  were  indeed  upon  the  threshold  of  his 
rest.  With  what  joy,  with  what  a  beating  heart 
he  would  long  to  see  that  very  Santa  Casa,  the 
cottage  built  of  brick,  which  angels  lifted  from 
Nazareth  out  of  the  black  hands  of  the  Saracen, 
and  gently  dropped  among  the  nightingales  in 
the  forest  of  Loreta  on  that  mystic  night  of  the 
year  1294.  There  .  .  .  the  humble  Casa  lay  in 
the  marble  enclosure  which  Sansovino  had  made 
for  it,  and  there  through  the  barbaric  brickwork 
window  in  the  Holy  Chimney  he  could  see,  in  a 
trance  of  wonder,  the  gilded  head  of  Madonna's 
cedarn  image  that  St.  Luke  the  Evangelist  had 
carved  with  his  own  hands.  .  .  .  To  minister  all 
day  in  the  rich  incense  ...  to  trim  the  golden 
lamps  ...  to  pass  in  and  out  between  the  golden 
cherubim  and  brazen  seraphim.  .  .  .  There,  in 
the  very  house  of  Jesus,  to  hear  the  noise  and 
mutter  of  the  officiating  priest,  the  bustle  of 
canons,  chaplains,  monks,  and  deacons,  the  shrill 
sweet  voices  of  the  acolytes  singing  all  day  long 
— this  must  have  seemed  the  very  end  of  life  and 
beginning  of  heaven  to  the  mystical  and  sensuous 
Crashaw." 

But  a  greater  rest  was  at  hand.     Making  his 


THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  HOLY  HOUSE  OF  LORETTO 
Where  Crashaw  lies  buried 


RICHARD  CRASHAW  45 

journey  from  Rome  in  the  summer  of  1650,  the 
poet  contracted  a  fever  which  quickly  broke  his 
constitution :  only  a  few  weeks  did  he  linger 
before  the  altar — then  the  church  which  was  to 
have  been  his  sanctuary  became  his  tomb : 

How  well,  blest  swan,  did  fate  contrive  thy  death  ; 
And  make  thee  render  up  thy  tuneful  breath 
In  thy  great  Mistress'  arms,  thou  most  divine 
And  richest  offering-  of  Loretto's  shrine  ! 

So  sang  Abraham  Cowley  of  his  friend — "poet 
and  saint,  O  hard  and  rarest  union  that  can  be  ! " 

Born  in  earlier  ages,  Crashaw  might  be  pictured 
as  going  to  martyrdom  with  a  smile  and  a  hymn 
of  praise  upon  his  lips :  or,  in  the  quiet  of  a 
monastic  cell  he  might  have  worked  lovingly  upon 
those  heavenly  verses — a  poetic  Fra  Angelico. 
But  the  thundering  questions  of  Cromwell's  day 
woke  little  echo  in  his  nature.  All  about  him  men 
were  demanding  if  king  or  parliament  should  rule 
England  ;  he  cared  little,  providing  the  Counsels 
of  Perfection  ruled  his  own  life,  and  dreamed  on 
while  others  fought.  Crashaw  was  not,  perhaps, 
a  leader  of  men  ;  but  he  was  most  indubitably  a 
follower  of  God.  And  he  could  act  as  well  as 
dream  when  the  crisis  came — he  could  and  did  act 
with  such  an  uncompromising  fidelity  to  truth  and 
to  his  own  ideals  that  the  old  world's  story  is 
brighter  for  his  record. 

With  estimates  of  Richard  Crashaw  it  is 
customary  to  couple  the  name  of  George  Herbert ; 
a  comparison  which  was  begun  by  that  editor  of 
1646,  and  has  persisted  since.  Superficially  it 
seems  reasonable  :  their  writings  were  almost 
contemporaneous  ;  they  were  said  to  be  of  the 
same  "school";  both  were  sincerely  religious; 
their  very  titles,  The  Temple  and  Steps  to  the 
Temple,  imply  more  than  an  accidental  propin- 


46  THE  POETS'  CHANTRY 

quity.  But  in  truth,  one  might  almost  as  well 
compare  Jeremy  Taylor  with  Ignatius  Loyola.  In 
Herbert's  work  we  have  the  piously  beautiful 
fancies  of  a  poetic  English  clergyman ;  in 
Crashaw's,  the  burning  dreams  of  a  genius  and 
a  mystic.  Speaking  of  this  from  a  wholly 
literary  standpoint,  Dr.  Grosart  declares  our 
poet's  work  "of  a  diviner  stuff,  and  woven  in 
a  grander  loom  ;  in  sooth,  infinitely  deeper  and 
finer  in  almost  every  element  of  true  singing  as 
differenced  from  pious  and  gracious  versifying." 
But  obviously  the  stream  was  not  innocent  of 
tributaries.  The  influence  of  the  Italian  Marino 
is  conspicuous,  not  only  in  Crashaw's  translation 
of  the  "  Sospetto  d'Herode,"  but  throughout  his 
style  as  a  whole  ;  indeed,  this  elaborate  fanciful- 
ness  of  writing  is  noticeable  in  all  the  poets  of  the 
day.  There  is,  to  boot,  more  than  a  touch  of 
John  Donne's  subtlety  in  his  work,  although  but 
little  of  his  ambiguity.  As  for  Robert  Southwell, 
I  think  we  cannot  doubt  his  influence  on  Crashaw, 
and  his  real  affinity  of  temperament ;  he  is  one  of 
the  very  few  other  Englishmen  in  whom  we  find 
this  singular  blending  of  "  conceit"  with  deep 
sincerity — of  emotional  tenderness  with  ascetic 
concentration  upon  things  divine.  But  most 
potent  of  all  were  the  writings  of  the  great  Spanish 
contemplative,  St.  Teresa : 

From  thence, 
I  learnt  to  know  that  Love  is  eloquence, 

Crashaw  declares  :  and  again — 

Thus  have  I  back  again  to  thy  bright  name, 
(Fair  flood  of  holy  fires  !)  transfus'd  the  flame 
I  took  from  reading  thee  ! 

Francis   Thompson  has  declared  that  Crashaw 


RICHARD  CRASHAW 47 

was  a  Shelley  manque ;  while  Shelley  was  what 
the  so-called  "  Metaphysical  School  "  should  have 
been  and  tended  to  be.  Something  of  all  this 
was  anticipated  by  an  earlier  critic,  Mr.  Gilfillan, 
who  was  happy  in  pointing  out  that  "  in  soaring 
imagination,  in  gorgeous  language,  in  ecstasy  of 
lyrical  movement,  Crashaw  very  much  resembles 
Shelley,  and  may  be  called  the  Christian  Shelley : 

'  His  raptures  are 
All  air  and  fire.' 

Yes :  it  is  the  air  of  the  rose-garden,  but  the 
fire  of  the  censer.  In  his  religious  poems  Crashaw 
rises  altogether  above  terrestrial  limits,  and  be- 
queaths us  half-intoxicating  draughts  of  fiery, 
tender  beauties.  That  famous  "  Hymn  to  the 
Name  and  Honour  of  the  Admirable  Sainte 
Teresa"  thrills  with  a  loveliness  never  bred  upon 
our  humble  earth. 

Scarce  has  she  blood  enough  to  make 
A  guilty  sword  blush  for  her  sake  ; 
Yet  has  she  blood  enough  to  prove 
How  much  less  strong"  is  Death  than  Love, 

the  poet  writes  in  allusion  to  her  childish  desire 
for  martyrdom ;  and  later  he  breaks  into  that 
wondrous  outburst : 

Thou  art  Love's  victime  ;  and  must  dy 
A  death  more  mysticall  and  high, 


His  is  the  dart  must  make  the  death 
Whose  stroke  shall  taste  thy  hallow'd  breath  ; 
A  dart  thrice  dip't  in  that  rich  flame 
Which  writes  thy  Spouse's  radiant  name 
Upon  the  roof  of  Heav'n,  where  ay 


5o  THE  POETS'  CHANTRY 

English,  possibly  distasteful  even  to  the  colder 
English  mind ;  but  it  is  certainly  not  "  swooning  " 
or  "languishing,"  as  Gilfillan  once  complained — 
largely,  one  infers,  because  he  imagined  Catholic 
mysticism  to  be  a  swooning  and  languishing 
thing.  Crashaw's  nature,  in  every  fibre,  was  as 
sensitive  to  each  passing  emotion  as  the  strings 
of  the  harp  to  its  master's  touch  :  and,  once  struck, 
the  note  vibrated  indefinitely.  II  avail  les  defauts 
de  ses  qualites,  in  the  familiar  phrase. 

Crashaw  was  very  rarely  autobiographical,  yet 
the  seal  of  his  individuality  is  stamped  on  all  his 
verse.  Indeed,  as  being  part  of  his  own  life  and 
personality,  his  poems  occupy  a  place  quite  apart 
from  their  position  in  literary  history.  He,  in  his 
own  day,  was  often  misunderstood  ;  and  it  is  still 
the  easiest  thing  for  unsympathetic  minds  to  mis- 
understand the  poetry  he  has  left.  Paradoxical  it 
may  sound,  but  is  none  the  less  true,  that  we 
must  love  the  poet  a  little  before  we  can  greatly 
appreciate  him.  Strength  and  weakness  were  his, 
doubtless  ;  but  strength  predominated  alike  in  the 
man  and  in  his  work.  However  extravagant  his 
fancies,  they  are  patently  the  flashes  of  a  mind 
rushed  on  by  the  whirlwind  of  unbounded  imagi- 
nation— never  the  mock-heroics  of  a  mere  rhetori- 
cian. And  the  reason  of  all  this  is  simple  enough : 
Richard  Crashaw  was  fundamentally,  consum- 
mately, sincere.  When  his  verse  soars  up  to 
heights  celestial,  among  fragrant  nests  of  seraphim 
and  fair  adoring  saints,  his  own  soul  breathes 
through  the  ecstasy.  Cannot  we  hear  his  voice 
ringing  down  the  ages,  as  he  appeals  with 
characteristic  self  -  abnegation  to  his  beloved 
Teresa? 

Oh,  thou  undaunted  daughter  of  desires, 
By  all  thy  dower  of  lights  and  fires  ; 


RICHARD  CRASHAW  51 

By  all  the  eagle  in  thee,  all  the  dove  ; 

By  all  thy  lives  and  deaths  of  love  ; 

By  thy  larg  draughts  of  intellectuall  day, — 

And  by  thy  thirsts  of  love,  more  larg  than  they  ; 

By  all  thy  brim-fill'd  bowles  of  fierce  desire  ; 

By  thy  last  morning's  draught  of  liquid  fire  ; 

By  the  full  kingdome  of  that  finall  kisse 

That  seiz'd  thy  parting  soul,  and  seal'd  thee  His  ; 

By  all  the  Heav'ns  thou  hast  in  Him, 

(Fair  sister  of  the  seraphim  !) 

By  all  of  Him  we  have  in  thee, 

Leave  nothing  of  myself  in  me  ; 

Let  me  so  read  thy  life,  that  I 

Unto  all  life  of  mine  may  dy  ! 

And  once  having  heard,  could  we,  by  any  chance, 
confuse  this  voice  with  another's? 


AUBREY   DE    VERE 

IT  is  a  misfortune,  even  if  a  flattering  one,  for  an 
author's  personality  to  overshadow  his  literary 
reputation.  Such,  long  ago,  was  the  fate  of  the 
patriarchal  Dr.  Johnson  (about  whom  we  have  all 
read  so  much),  and  such,  in  a  modern  instance, 
would  seem  to  be  the  case  with  Aubrey  de  Vere. 
His  own  Recollections,  and  the  more  exhaustive 
Memoir  by  his  friend  Wilfrid  Ward,  are  on  the 
shelves  of  many  a  library  which  boasts  few 
volumes  of  his  prose  and  none  at  all  of  his  poetry. 
The  gracious  culture  of  his  Irish  home  at  Curragh 
Chase ;  the  story  of  his  travels  and  his  friendships 
with  the  greatest  men  and  women  of  the  time;  the 
Famine  years  which  woke  the  dreamer  into  a  man 
of  heroic  action  ;  the  spiritual  pilgrimage  which 
led  him  eventually  into  the  Catholic  communion 
— all  this  is  familiar  enough  to  need  no  repetition. 
It  is  Aubrey  de  Vere's  poetic  achievement  to 
which  adequate  recognition  is  but  seldom  ac- 
corded. "  I  have  lived  among  poets  a  great 
deal  and  have  known  greater  poets  than  he  is," 
wrote  Sara  Coleridge  in  a  memorable  passage, 
"  but  a  more  entire  poet,  and  one  more  a  poet  in 
his  whole  mind  and  temperament,  I  never  knew 
or  met  with." 

Aubrey  de  Vere's  half-century  of  poetic  pre- 
occupation was  richly  various  in  its  fruitfulness. 
The  Search  after  Proserpine  appeared  in  1843  ;  ten 
years  later,  a  volume  of  Miscellaneous  and  Sacred 
Poems ;  in  1857  came  the  first  of  the  May  Carols 
(completed  in  1881);  in  1861,  Inisfaily  The  Sisters, 

52 


AUBREY  DE  VERE 
At  the  age  of  20 

From  a  coloured  drawing  by  (falter  L.  Cotts 


AUBREY  DE  VERE  53 

etc.;  1872,  Legends  of 'St. Patrick;  1874,  Alexander 
the  Great;  1876,  St.  Thomas  of  Canterbury ;  1882, 
The  Foray  of  Qiteene  Maeve  and  Legends  of  Ire- 
land's Heroic  Age ;  1887,  Legends  and  Records  of 
the  Church  and  the  Empire;  1893,  Mediceval 
Records  and  Sonnets;  and  in  1897  (his  eighty- 
third  year),  St.  Peter's  Chains,  a  series  of  sonnets 
on  the  Italian  Revolution.  While  incomplete, 
this  bibliography  includes  epic,  lyric,  and  dramatic 
verse. 

Elsewhere  tracing  Irish  history  back  almost  to 
the  legendary  days  of  the  Sidhe,  in  the  latter  part 
of  fm'sfail,  and  in  numerous  minor  poems,  de 
Vere  tells  the  tragic  story  of  his  country's  recent 
years.  The  beautiful  closing  stanzas  of  "The 
Year  of  Sorrow"  illustrate  how  much  of  pathos 
yet  how  little  of  bitterness  de  Vere  infused  into 
his  elegy  of  1849  : 

Fall,  snow,  and  cease  not !  Flake  by  flake 
The  decent  winding-sheet  compose. 

Thy  task  is  just  and  pious  ;  make 
An  end  of  blasphemies  and  woes. 

On  quaking  moor  and  mountain  moss, 

With  eyes  upstaring  at  the  sky, 
With  arms  extended  like  a  cross, 

The  long-expectant  sufferers  lie. 

Bend  o'er  them,  white-robed  Acolyte  ! 

Put  forth  thine  hand  from  cloud  and  mist, 
And  minister  the  last  sad  Rite, 

Where  altar  there  is  none,  nor  priest. 

Touch  thou  the  gates  of  soul  and  sense  ; 

Touch  darkening  eyes  and  dying  ears  : 
Touch  stiffening  hands  and  feet,  and  thence 

Remove  the  trace  of  sin  and  tears. 


54 THE  POETS'  CHANTRY 

This  night  the  Absolver  issues  forth  : 
This  night  the  Eternal  Victim  bleeds  : 

O  winds  and  woods — O  heaven  and  earth  ! 
Be  still  this  night.    The  Rite  proceeds  ! 

Back  through  the  days  of  the  Penal  Laws  and 
the  Wars  of  Religion,  through  the  three  centuries 
of  outlawry  following  the  Norman  Conquest,  runs 
this  "lyrical  chronicle,"  Tnisfail;  its  parts  bound 
together  by  a  continuity  of  tears  and  by  the  poet's 
insistence  upon  Ireland's  spiritual  vocation  among 
the  nations  of  the  earth.  "No  other  poem  of 
mine,"  de  Vere  wrote  some  thirty-five  years  later, 
"was  written  more  intensely,  I  may  say  painfully, 
from  my  heart,  than  Inisfail"  And  no  other 
poem  of  his  has  surpassed  it  in  sweetness  or 
pathos  or  in  a  certain  fiery,  elemental  vigour. 

In  the  earlier  record,  St.  Patrick,  crozier  in 
hand,  passes  before  us,  treading  the  hills  and 
vales  of  Erin,  preaching  to  the  poor,  baptising 
those  sweet  sister-princesses,  the  "Red  Rose" 
and  "  Ethna  the  Fair,"  confounding  the  proud 
and  winning  them  to  humility : 

The  Saint  his  great  soul  flung  upon  the  world, 
And  took  the  people  with  him  like  a  wind 

to  the  very  feet  of  Christ.  It  is  a  series  of  noble 
national  poems,  ending  with  the  final  "Striving 
of  St.  Patrick"  on  Mount  Cruachan.  De  Vere's 
Legends  of  the  Saxon  Saints  form  a  companion- 
work  of  hagiology.  "The  English  differed  much 
from  the  Irish,"  says  the  poet,  "even  in  their 
primitive  saints.  There  was  less  of  the  wild  and 
strange  about  them  .  .  .  less  of  the  missionary, 
but  more  of  the  Christian  subject  and  citizen." 
Much  of  the  material  for  this  volume  was  taken 
from  the  Venerable  Bede,  with  which  there  is 


AUBREY  DE  VERE  55 

an  interweaving  of  the  Odin  legends  and  pro- 
phecies. 

His  further  interest  in  the  old  heroic  and  bardic 
literature  was  evident  in  his  "  Oiseen "  poems; 
but  it  was  not  until  1880,  when  he  became  familiar 
with  various  MS.  collections  in  the  Royal  Irish 
Academy  of  Dublin,  that  it  took  any  notable  form. 
Lady  Gregory  had  not  yet  produced  her  epoch- 
making  translations  of  the  old  Irish  sagas;  neither 
Yeats  nor  Fiona  MacLeod  nor  any  of  the  younger 
poets  had  brought  the  wild  notes  of  Gaelic  poetry 
to  English  hearing.  Aubrey  de  Vere  was  the 
pioneer  in  re-creating  that  epoch  of  primitive  and 
barbaric  glory.  His  Legends  of  Ireland's  Heroic 
Age  told  anew  of  the  hapless  Foray  of  Queen 
Maeve,  of  the  mighty  Cuchullain  whose  "starry 
head"  was  destined  so  soon  to  sleep  in  death,  of 
the  Children  of  Lir,  and  of  Deirdre  and  the  Sons 
of  Usnach.  When  we  recall  that  the  poet  drew  his 
material  from  a  few  incomplete  English  transla- 
tions of  the  great  epics,  it  is  amazing,  not  that  he 
lacked  the  ingenuous  and  unforgettable  charm  of 
Lady  Gregory's  version,  but  that  he  reproduced 
so  well  the  spirit  of  those  "  great-hearted  and 
light-hearted  "  heroes. 

Many  of  the  greatest  stories  of  Christendom  are 
included  in  de  Vere's  two  volumes  of  Records. 
The  Middle  Ages  (however  imperfectly  under- 
stood) have  been  an  unfailing  source  of  literary 
inspiration  ;  but  the  period  preceding  them — 
from  about  50  A.D.  to  the  reign  of  Charlemagne 
— has,  to  all  but  specialists,  been  a  sort  of  "outer 
darkness."  Aubrey  de  Vere,  adding  the  poet's 
insight  to  the  amateur's  erudition,  recognised  it 
as  covering  several  of  the  most  significant  eras  of 
human  history.  His  Legends  of  the  Church  and 
the  Empire  cover  this  whole  wondrous  period. 
They  sing  the  death  of  outworn  Paganism  and 


THE  POETS'  CHANTRY 


the  triumph  of  that  young  Church  whose  face 
shone  as  the  dawn  even  when  her  robe  was  crim- 
soned by  the  sands  of  the  arena  ;  moans  of  an 
impotent  and  effete  civilisation  mingle  with  the 
battle-cries  of  Constantine  or  Theodoric ;  and 
mighty  as  some  resistless  sea  is  the  onrushing 
sweep  of  those  Northern  hordes  who  triumph  at 
last  in  the  Fall  of  Rome.  It  seemed  a  second 
Deluge,  even  to  men  like  St.  Jerome.  But  suc- 
ceeding legends  show  how  the  songs  of  a  new 
Sion  brought  their  message  into  the  Stranger's 
Land ;  they  tell  of  the  peaceful  conquests  of  Boni- 
face and  Germanus,  of  the  sweet  sanctity  of  St. 
Genevieve  or  Queen  Clothilde — and  at  last  of 
Charlemagne's  coronation  as  first  emperor  of  the 
Holy  Roman  Empire. 

Mediceval  Records  and  Sonnets  continue  the  his- 
tory, recounting  with  the  same  earnest  felicity  the 
Cid's  conquests  over  Moslem  power,  the  stories  of 
Queen  Bertha  and  Jeanne  d'Arc  and  Robert 
Bruce,  of  Columbus  the  discoverer  and  Coper- 
nicus the  astronomer.  Occasional  translations  from 
St.  Gertrude  or  the  Fiorettiy  and  a  poem  of  notable 
beauty  and  elevation  (" The  Higher  Purgatory") 
partially  transcribed  from  St.  Catherine  of  Genoa, 
are  further  evidence  of  de  Vere's  affectionate  in- 
timacy with  mediaeval  life.  "  It  was  imaginative, 
not  critical,"  writes  the  poet  in  his  Preface:  "  with 
much  of  a  childish  instability  and  something  of 
that  strange  and  heedless  cruelty  sometimes  to  be 
found  in  children,  it  united  a  childlike  simplicity. 
It  loved  to  wonder  and  was  not  afraid  of  proving 
mistaken.  Stormy  passions  swept  over  it,  and 
great  crimes  alternated  with  heroic  deeds ;  but  it 
was  comparatively  free  from  a  more  insidious 
snare  than  the  passions — that  of  self-love."  Per- 
haps the  heaviest  charge  to  be  brought  against 
the  dramatic  reality  of  the  poems  is  that  they  do 


AUBREY  DE  VERE  57 

obscure  the  full  stress  of  these  "stormy  passions." 
De  Vere  kept  his  eyes  upon  the  heights,  forget- 
ting, or  not  forgetting,  that  only  the  saints  dwell 
thereon.  All  too  little  is  there  in  his  Records 
of  that  fierce  conflict  of  soul  and  sense,  that  youth- 
ful, passionate  ardour  both  in  good  and  evil,  to 
which  the  very  penances  of  the  ancient  Church 
bear  witness. 

A  bridal  then,  and  now  a  death, 
A  short,  glad  space  between  them  !     Such  is  life  ! 
That  means  our  earthly  life  is  but  betrothal ; 
The  marriage  is  where  marriage  vows  are  none — 

so  declares  one  of  de  Vere's  youthful  knights, 
with  a  detachment  and  a  spiritual  grasp  char- 
acteristic, indeed,  of  the  modern  poet — and  in  no 
age  possible,  one  suspects,  to  the  mass  of  men 
and  women. 

Quotations  from  narrative  poems  are  seldom 
satisfying  when  the  poet's  virtue  lies  rather  in 
sustained  and  comprehensive  excellence  than  in 
"purple  passages."  But  a  number  of  these 
legends  or  records  resolve  themselves,  through 
their  strongly  personal  quality,  into  the  form  of 
dramatic  monologues.  The  chosen  spokesmen 
are  all  of  exalted  and  philosophic  tendencies, 
and  they  are  depicted  at  moments  when  "life's 
fitful  fever  "  is  well-nigh  spent.  Yet  there  is  no 
dull  uniformity  in  the  setting  of  the  sun — still 
less  in  the  passing  of  a  soul.  De  Vere  has  made 
the  contrast  of  temperament  exceedingly  forcible, 
for  instance,  in  the  final  soliloquies  of  Constantine 
and  St.  Jerome.  Each  looks  back  upon  a  "life 
of  wars  "  ;  upon  aspiration  and  failure  and  much 
hunger  of  the  spirit ;  but  the  difference  is  as  of 
storm-cloud  and  starlight.  Grimly  the  frustrated 
Emperor  reviews  his  gigantic  efforts  to  rebuild 
the  Roman  structure,  and  his  cry  is  vanitas : 


58  THE  POETS'  CHANTRY 

Some  power  there  was  that  counter-worked  my  work 
With  hand  too  swift  for  sight,  which,  crossing  mine, 
Set  warp  'gainst  woof  and  ever  with  my  dawn 
Inwove  its  night.     What  hand  was  that  I  know  not : 
Perchance  it  was  the  Demon's  of  my  House  ; 
Perchance  a  Hand  Divine. 

But  as  the  great  silence  draws  upon  Jerome,  his 
voice  rings  out  in  challenge  : 

Paula,  what  is  earth  ? 
A  little  bubble  trembling  ere  it  breaks, 
The  plaything  of  that  grey-haired  infant,  Time, 
Who  breaks  whate'er  he  plays  with.     I  was  strong  : 
See  how  he  played  with  me.     Am  I  not  broken  ? 
Albeit  I  strove  with  men  of  might ;  albeit 
Those  two  great  Gregories  clasped  me  palm  to  palm  ; 
Albeit  I  fought  with  beasts  at  Ephesus 
And  bear  their  tokens  still ;  albeit  the  wastes 
Knew  me,  and  lions  fled  ;  albeit  this  hand, 
Wrinkled  and  prone,  hurled  to  the  dust  God's  scorners, 
Am  I  not  broken?     Lo,  this  hour  I  raise 
High  o'er  that  ruin  and  wreck  of  life  not  less 
This  unsubverted  head  that  bent  not  ever, 
And  make  my  great  confession  ere  I  die, 
Since  hope  I  have,  though  earthly  hope  no  more. 
And  this  is  my  confession :  God  is  great ; 
There  is  no  other  greatness  :  God  is  good  ; 
There  is  no  other  goodness.     He  alone 
Is  true  existence  :  all  beside  is  dream. 

That  is  de  Vere's  high-water  mark  in  the  drama- 
tic monologue  ;  there  are  less  felicitous  instances. 
Browning's  method  in  the  soliloquy  was,  it  will 
be  remembered,  to  reproduce  the  broken  sen- 
tences, the  seemingly  irrelevant  thoughts,  the 
passionate  outbursts  of  a  soul  communing  with 
itself;  hence  his  dramatic  truthfulness — hence, 
also,  a  measure  of  ambiguity.  With  de  Vere  the 
tendency  was  rather  to  be  too  clear,  too  ex- 


AUBREY  DE  VERE  59 

haustive  ;  and,  as  in  the  "  Death  of  Copernicus," 
unconvincingly  replete. 

Stricter  dramatic  canons,  however,  are  more 
fairly  applied  to  de  Vere's  tragedies.  They  are 
but  two  in  number  (if  one  except  the  fragmentary 
Fall  of  Rora) — Alexander  the  Great,  and  5*. 
Thomas  of  Canterbury — both  of  which  are  quite 
impossible  theatrically.  Yet  these  two  "closet 
dramas"  contain  much  of  the  noblest  poetry  de 
Vere  ever  produced.  None  but  the  greatest 
genius  could  vivify  a  theme  so  remote  as  that  of 
Alexander;  but  de  Vere  presents  a  series  of 
splendid  and  moving  tableaux,  glowing  at  times 
with  descriptive  passages  of  surpassing  beauty. 
The  character-drawing,  while  slight,  is  often  im- 
pressive :  the  Persian  princess  Arsinoe — to  whom 
are  given  many  of  the  loveliest  lines  of  the  play — 
being  one  of  those  tender,  meditative  souls  whom 
de  Vere  understood  so  well  how  to  delineate. 
The  Conqueror  himself  is  scarcely  more  than  a 
majestic  lay  figure,  our  clearest  conception  of  his 
genius  coming  less  from  any  revelation  of  his 
own  than  from  Ptolemy's  brief  and  telling  esti- 
mate : 

He  swifter  than  the  morn 
O'er  rushed  the  globe.     Expectant  centuries 
Condensed  themselves  into  a  few  brief  years 
To  work  his  will. 

On  the  other  hand,  Aubrey  de  Vere's  charac- 
terisation of  Thomas  a  Becket  is  deeply  convinc- 
ing :  probably  the  very  best  portrait  of  the  great 
primate  in  English  literature1  With  consummate 
art  and  uncompromising  historic  truth  is  traced 
that  thorny  path  which  led  the  amiable  young 

1  For  an  interesting1  comparative  study  of  de  Vere's  Sf.  Thomas 
and  Tennyson's  Becket,  see  "  Imitators  of  Shakespeare"  in  Dr. 
Egan's  Ghost  in  Hamlet,  and  Other  Essays, 


60  THE  POETS'  CHANTRY 

diplomat  up  to  heights  of  Christian  sainthood. 
We  hear  of  Thomas  first  when,  as  Chancellor  of 
King  Henry,  he  visits  the  French  court  in  a 
pageant  of  mediaeval  splendour  : 

"  Of  his  own  household  there  were  two  hundred 
— clerics  and  knights — chanting  hymns.  Then 
followed  his  hounds — ten  couples.  Next  came 
eight  wagons  with  five  horses  each  .  .  .  then 
followed  twelve  sumpter  horses.  The  esquires 
bore  the  shields  and  the  falconers  the  hawks  on 
their  fists  ;  after  them  came  those  that  held  the 
banners  ;  and  last,  my  lord  on  a  milk-white  horse. 
.  .  .  Thomas  gave  gifts  to  all — to  the  princes, 
and  the  clergy,  and  the  knights,  and  to  the  poor 
more  than  to  the  rich  .  .  .  when  he  feasted  the 
beggars,  he  bade  them  take  with  them  the  gilded 
spoons  and  goblets." 

Becket  is  raised  to  the  see  of  Canterbury,  and 
thenceforth,  step  by  step,  the  poet  pictures  his 
struggle  for  the  freedom  of  the  English  Church. 
Single-handed  he  fights  the  pride  and  treachery 
of  his  king,  the  weakness  of  his  bishops,  the 
guile  of  tireless  enemies  ;  until,  on  that  black 
December  night  of  1170,  the  blow  of  martyrdom 
is  struck.  It  is  a  scene  noble  even  to  sublimity. 
Vesper  time  draws  near  in  the  great  Cathedral, 
and  two  priests  are  speaking  brokenly  of  their 
Primate : 

At  yonder  altar  of  Saint  Benedict 
He  said  his  mass  ;  then  in  the  chapter-house 
Conversed  with  two  old  monks  of  thing's  divine  : 
Next  for  his  confessor  he  sent,  and  made 
Confession  with  his  humble  wont,  but  briefly  ; 
Last,  sat  with  us  an  hour,  and  held  discourse 
Full  gladsomely.   .  .   .  An  old  monk  cried, 
"Thank  God,  my  lord,  you  make  good  cheer!" 

He  answered, 
"  Who  goeth  to  his  Master  should  be  glad." 


AUBREY  DE  VERE  61 

(John  of  Salisbury)  : 

His  Master  !     Ay,  his  Master  !     Still  as  such 

He  thought  of  God  ;  he  loved  Him  ;  in  himself 

Saw  nothing  great  or  wise — simply  a  servant. 

Ere  yet  his  earliest  troubles  had  begun 

I  heard  him  say,  "A  bishop  should  protect 

That  holy  thing,  God's  Church,  to  him  committed, 

Not  only  from  the  world  but  from  himself, 

Loving,  not  hers,  but  her,  with  reverent  love, 

A  servant's  love  that,  gazing,  fears  to  touch  her." 


Peace,  peace  !     O  God,  we  make  our  tale  of  him 
As  men  that  praise  the  dead  ! 

Becket  enters  in  procession  from  the  cloister, 
and,  while  in  a  near-by  chapel  the  monks  are 
chanting,  those  four  traitor-knights  steal  in. 
There  is  a  brief  colloquy,  a  briefer  prayer — and 
St.  Thomas  falls  dead  beneath  their  swords. 

The  lyrics  scattered  in  Elizabethan  manner 
through  both  dramas  claim  a  mention  as  graceful 
and  in  entire  sympathy  with  the  action.  Perhaps 
most  charming  of  all  is  that  little  Trouvere  sere- 
nade in  St.  Thomas,  beginning 

I  make  not  songs,  but  only  find ; 
Love  following  still  the  circling  sun 
His  carol  casts  on  every  wind, 
And  other  singer  is  there  none. 

This  is  one  of  the  instances  in  which  de  Vere's 
verse  rings  with  the  true  lyric  quality.  His  early 
lines  "To  Keats"  flash  back  a  gleam  of  that 
singer's  own  "white  fire"  of  beauty;  there  is  a 
delightful  play  of  fancy  throughout  his  Greek 
Idyls  and  through  that  gracious  and  delicate 
masque,  "The  Search  after  Proserpine."  But 
in  the  marvellous  felicity  of  epithet,  in  the  winged 


62 THE  POETS'  CHANTRY 

lightness  of  thought  and  radiance  of  imagery  ; 
above  all,  in  that  consummate  sense  of  the  music 
of  words  which  makes  the  lyrist's  eternal  heritage, 
Aubrey  de  Vere  was — save  in  supreme  moments — 
deficient.  There  were  indeed  these  moments. 
Here,  for  instance,  is  a  little  song,  Shakespearian 
in  its  sweet  and  naive  inevitability  : 

When  I  was  young-,  I  said  to  Sorrow, 
"  Come,  and  I  will  play  with  thee  "  : 
He  is  near  me  now  all  day  ; 
And  at  night  returns  to  say, 
"  I  will  come  again  to-morrow, 
I  will  come  and  stay  with  thee." 

Through  the  woods  we  walk  together  ; 
His  soft  footsteps  rustle  nigh  me  ; 
To  shield  an  unregarded  head, 
He  hath  built  a  winter  shed  ; 
And  all  night  in  rainy  weather, 

I  hear  his  gentle  breathings  by  me. 

Yet  in  the  main,  this  poet's  message  was  too  closely 
reasoned  to  be  sung:  a  Gregorian  chant  would 
seem  the  only  possible  or  appropriate  vehicle. 
Weakness  of  form,  Matthew  Arnold  contended,  is 
nearly  always  accompanied  by  weakness  of  matter 
and  thought.  Nevertheless,  there  are  poets  whose 
habitual  merit  lies  in  the  enchanting  beauty  of 
their  verse-effects ;  and  others  there  are  whose 
highest  excellence  lies  in  the  soul  rather  than  the 
body  of  their  verse.  So  it  was  with  Aubrey  de 
Vere.  Blank  verse,  the  ode,  the  sonnet,  and 
various  simpler  forms  he  has  used  with  excellent 
effect  :  but  one  feels  that  in  avoiding  more  ornate 
and  intricate  verse-schemes  he  was  wisely  aware 
of  the  lyrical  deficiencies  already  noted. 

"The   Martyrdom,"  and  others  of  the  earlier 
devotional  poems,  betray  the  influence  of  South- 


AUBREY  DE  VERE  63 

well  and  Crashaw,  to  whose  sweet  memory  they 
were  dedicated  ;  but  de  Vere's  affinities  were  not 
with  these  choristers  of  the  fiery  heart  and  rapturous 
voice.  His  later  and  abiding  model  was  Words- 
worth, whose  simple  diction,  his  deep  sincerity 
and  Nature-brooding,  mark  de  Vere's  religious 
cycle,  the  May  Carols.  These  are  infallibly  tender 
and  reverent ;  they  are  lucid,  even  epigrammatic 
at  moments;  their  subject-matter  is  sublimely 
spiritual.  But  the  poems  (save,  perhaps,  those 
exquisite  little  interspersed  landscape  reveries)  are 
not  carols  at  all.  They  are  a  prolonged  medita- 
tion upon  Christian  truths  centring  round  about 
the  Incarnation.  "Mater  Christi,"  one  of  the 
least  theological,  will  illustrate  the  tranquil  beauty 
of  the  series : 

He  willed  to  lack,  he  willed  to  bear  ; 

He  willed  by  suffering"  to  be  schooled  ; 
He  willed  the  chains  of  flesh  to  wear : 

Yet  from  her  arms  the  world  He  ruled. 


He  sat  beside  the  lowly  door  ; 

His  homeless  eyes  appeared  to  trace 
In  evening'  skies  remembered  lore, 

And  shadows  of  His  Father's  face. 
One  only  knew  him.     She  alone 

Who  nightly  to  His  cradle  crept, 
And,  lying  like  the  moonbeams  prone, 

Worshipped  her  Maker  as  He  slept. 

It  is  the  obtrusion  of  a  sort  of  glorified  catechetical 
instruction,  and  the  subordination  of  the  pure 
poetic  quality,  which  mars  many  of  these  May 
Carols.  The  tendency  is  not  towards  the  mystical 
but  towards  the  metaphysical.  Sadly  enough,  all 
this  was  merely  de  Vere's  passionate  love  of  truth, 
"strained  from  its  fair  use"  with  the  usual 


64  THE  POETS'  CHANTRY 

calamitous  result.  In  this  case  the  effect  was 
a  consistent  restraint  of  the  imaginative  and 
emotional  faculties,  a  philosophic  aloofness  from 
"life's  beauteous  nothings  writ  in  dust" — in  one 
word,  preoccupation  with  the  catechetical  rather 
than  the  aesthetic  aspect  of  life.  That  he  contrived 
to  put  so  much  grace  into  sonnets  on — let  us  say — 
"Church  Discipline,"  "Evidences  of  Religion," 
the  "  Irish  Constitution  of  1872,"  that  he  so 
successfully  linked  temporary  interests  with  the 
ultimate  and  universal  in  his  "occasional  "  verses, 
is  strongest  evidence  of  his  incorrigibly  poetic 
nature.  None  the  less,  it  is  a  relief  to  extricate 
from  this  mass  of  political  and  commemorative 
work  that  bearing  the  authentic  hall-mark.  Aubrey 
de  Vere  was  a  great  artist ;  he  was  even  a  greater 
man.  But  alike  by  instinct  and  by  conviction  was 
he  given  to  polemics.  "  I  wish  either  to  be  con- 
sidered as  a  teacher  or  as  nothing, '  declared 
Wordsworth,  his  friend  and  most  potential  model ; 
and  one  knows  that  every  artist  is  a  teacher  ac- 
cording to  the  measure  of  truth  within  his  soul. 
The  danger  lies  in  forgetting — or  in  ignoring — 
how  much  more  he  must  also  be. 

But  the  poet  does  all  things  more  graciously 
than  other  men,  and  de  Vere's  keen  sense  of 
beauty  transfigured  his  didacticism  even  as  the 
illuminator  was  wont  to  brighten  with  bird  and 
flower  the  page  of  some  old  manuscript.  One  can 
forgive  an  occasional  zeal  in  pointing  morals  to  him 
whose  message  is  summed  up  perfect,  crystal-clear, 
in  that  memorably  beautiful  sonnet,  "Sorrow"  : 

Count  each  affliction,  whether  light  or  grave, 
God's  messenger  sent  down  to  thee  ;  do  thou 
With  courtesy  receive  him  ;  rise  and  bow  ; 
And,  ere  his  shadow  pass  thy  threshold,  crave 
Permission  first  his  heavenly  feet  to  lave  ; 
Then  lay  before  him  all  thou  hast :  allow 


AUBREY  DE  VERB 
In  his  old  age 


AUBREY  DE  VERE 65 

No  cloud  of  passion  to  usurp  thy  brow, 
Or  mar  thy  hospitality  ;  no  wave 
Of  mortal  tumult  to  obliterate 
The  soul's  marmoreal  calmness  :  Grief  should  be, 
Like  joy,  majestic,  equable,  sedate, 
Confirming,  cleansing,  raising,  making  free  ; 
Strong  to  consume  small  troubles  ;  to  commend 
Great  thoughts,  grave  thoughts,  thoughts  lasting  to  the 
end. 

Great  and  grave  thoughts,  high  and  holy 
thoughts :  such  were  the  habitual  companions 
of  Aubrey  de  Vere.  He  weighed  life  by  those 
spiritual  values  which  were  to  him  the  only 
realities.  And  so  the  religious,  the  Catholic 
element  permeates  his  work  as  sunlight  radiates 
a  summer  noon.  But  religion  transfigures  with- 
out changing  the  character  ;  it  spiritualises  with- 
out in  any  wise  stereotyping  the  imagination. 
It  may,  as  in  Crashaw  or  Coventry  Patmore, 
surcharge  the  emotions  ;  or  it  may  dominate  the 
intellect  in  its  most  characteristic  channel — with 
de  Vere  the  channel  of  philosophic  meditation. 
He  looked  not  merely  through  the  deeds  of  men, 
but  equally  through  the  pageant  of  external 
Nature.  When,  for  example,  one  reads  his  finely 
poetical  ''Autumnal  Ode,"  one  meets  very  little 
of  that  mournful  or  exultant  sensuousness  with 
which  poets  have  immemorially  watched  the 
death  of  summer.  There  are  loving  suggestions 
of  the  blackbird's  last  carol,  of  "dusk-bright 
cobwebs"  and  the  glory  of  "sunset  forests,"  but 
through  this  symbolic  pageant  of  autumn  the  poet 
passes  to  thoughts  of  the  saintly  dead.  Precisely 
this  same  passion  for  interpretation  runs  through 
his  beautiful  "Ascent  of  the  Apennines."  It  is 
plaintive  in  that  most  characteristic  "Ode  to  an 
Eolian  Harp,"  and  in  very  truth  it  penetrates  his 
entire  secular  and  religious  verse. 


66  THE  POETS'  CHANTRY 

Sweetly  and  sagely 

In  order  grave  the  Maker  of  all  Worlds 
Still  modulates  the  rhythm  of  human  progress  ; 
His  angels,  on  whose  songs  the  seasons  float, 
Keep  measured  cadence  :  all  good  things  keep  time 
Lest  Good  should  strangle  Better, 

declares  his  dying  Copernicus.  And  this  poet's 
work  is  more  than  peaceful,  it  is  joyous.  The 
St.  Thecla  of  his  legend  is  not  only  "beauteous 
as  a  rose  new-blown,"  she  is  the  "  blithesomest" 
of  hermit-missionaries.  His  St.  Dorothea  (whom 
so  great  a  dramatist  as  Massinger  succeeded  in 
portraying  only  as  an  heroic  prig)  speaks  gaily, 
and  has  room  in  her  consecrated  heart  for  all 
"lovely  things  and  fair."  "Glad  man  was  he, 
our  Cid,"  cry  the  companions  of  the  great 
mediaeval  warrior;  and  one  learns  with  no  surprise 
of  Erin's  apostle  that 

There  was  ever  laughter  in  his  heart, 
And  music  in  that  laughter. 

So  has  de  Vere  dwelt  upon  the  blitheness  of 
Christian  character,  upon  the  God-like  stillness 
which  may  dwell  even  in  the  tempest's  heart. 
It  is  all  very  tranquil  and  beautiful,  this  golden 
haze  wrapping  the  world  in  peace.  And  if  it 
be  not  quite  like  human  life  as  most  of  us  know 
it,  why — so  much  the  worse  for  us! 

"I  am  doing  what  in  me  lies  to  keep  alive 
poetry  with  a  little  conscience  in  it,"  he  once  said, 
adding  with  characteristic  humility,  "if  I  fail  in 
that  attempt  I  shall  not  fret  about  it ;  others  will 
do  it  later — what  I  have  aimed  at  doing — and  will 
probably  do  it  better."  The  nobility  of  this  aim 
sweeps  through  his  pages,  pure  and  keen  as  the 
mountain's  breath.  We  feel  it  in  his  own  high 
seriousness  and  self-possession,  in  that  tender- 


AUBREY  DE  VERE  67 

ness  which  is  not  passion,  in  the  solid  and 
sublime  philosophy  which  underlies  his  utter- 
ance. But  the  Muse  is  imperious,  and  will  not 
brook  too  close  restraint.  A  little  rigidity,  a 
suspicion  of  coldness,  a  lack  of  that  glorious 
spontaneity  which  brings  the  world  down  to  a 
poet's  feet — such  is  the  penalty  for  reining  in 
the  bright  spirit !  May  it  not  be,  after  all,  that 
de  Vere  put  too  much  conscience  into  his  poetry  ; 
or  that  he  put  it  too  patently  and  insistently? 
For  there  is  a  wisdom  of  fools — and  alas  !  a  folly 
of  the  wise — not  solely  in  the  spiritual  life. 

It  has  frequently  been  proclaimed  that  the  writing 
of  even  inferior  verse  is  the  best  possible  recipe 
for  such  a  good  prose  style  as  may  be  acquired. 
We  find  in  the  poet's  use  of  prose  not  only  the 
habitual  delicacy  and  picturesqueness  we  should 
have  foreseen,  but  also  a  notable  precision  and 
sense  of  proportion — as  though  the  use  of  wings 
had  taught  all  the  possible  graces  of  walking.  It 
was  thus  with  Aubrey  de  Vere — in  the  many  essays 
he  contributed  to  the  Reviews,  in  his  memories  of 
friends  like  Tennyson,  in  his  voluminous  corres- 
pondence, in  his  Reminiscences,  and  the  other  prose 
volumes  that  make  prouder,  as  Landor  said  his 
verse  did,  "his  proud  name."  We  do  not  claim 
for  him  the  distinction,  and  music,  and  vitality  of 
unforgettable  prose  ;  but  at  least  this — that  his 
intellectual  breadth  and  seriousness,  his  poetic 
sensibility  and  critical  acumen,  coupled  with  his 
good  English  and  that  gracious  versatility  which 
one  thinks  of  as  Irish  (when  one  knows  it  is  not 
French)  render  Aubrey  de  Vere  worthy  of  a  throne 
among  the  scribes  of  the  island  Israel. 

During  the  same  years  of  the  nineteenth  century, 
English-speaking  Catholics  possessed  three  vastly 
different  apologists.  They  were  all  converts :  John 
Henry  Newman,  Isaac  Hecker  and^  Aubrey  de 


68  THE  POETS'  CHANTRY 

Vere.  Newman's  appeal  was  to  the  past,  to 
Patristic  evidences,  to  the  unity  (including,  of 
course,  the  development)  of  primitive  Christian 
faith.  Father  Hecker's  appeal  was  to  the  present : 
to  the  natural  laws  upon  which  the  supernatural 
rest,  to  that  "heart's  hunger  and  soul's  thirst" 
which  vital  Catholic  truth  alone  can  satisfy.  But 
Aubrey  de  Vere  was  conscious  of  no  past  or 
present  in  religious  experience.  In  theology,  as 
in  all  departments  of  thought,  he  was  a  psycho- 
logical critic.  His  appeal  was  to  the  intuitive 
sense  and  "spiritual  discernment"  first  of  all; 
and  then,  because  Catholicity  included  these,  to 
authority  and  to  human  nature.  And  in  his  prose, 
no  less  than  in  his  verse,  he  regarded  life  and  art 
from  a  standpoint  equally  soulful. 

His  own  spiritual  nature,  and  long  habits  of 
analytic  thought,  necessitated  this.  We  find  him 
making  fine  and  delicate  distinctions  in  words 
(which  are  always  at  the  same  time  distinctions  of 
thought),  as  between  reasoning  and  reason,  plea- 
sure and  enjoyment  ;  we  find  him  pointing  out  how 
"in  Coleridge's  poetry  the  reasoning  faculty  is 
chiefly  that  of  contemplation  and  reflection,  in 
Wordsworth's  the  meditative  and  discursive  pre- 
vail " ;  again  we  find  him  weighing  the  Elizabethan 
drama  by  psychological  standards,  where  Ruskin 
would  have  used  ethical,  and  Matthew  Arnold 
aesthetic  values.  And  throughout  his  entire  critical 
work  the  moral  and  artistic  elements  constantly 
interpenetrate.  Man,  however  minutely  studied, 
became  a  symbol  of  mankind,  and  all  minor 
verities,  whether  of  sense  or  intellect,  resolved 
themselves  into  one  immutable  and  comprehensive 
Truth.  De  Vere  has  observed  that  the  Greek 
knew  no  landscape,  although  he  delighted  in 
detached  objects  of  natural  beauty.  He  himself 
saw  all  details  as  part  of  some  harmonious  whole  ; 


AUBREY  DE  VERE  69 

nor  could  his  view  stop  short  of  the  distant  horizon. 
In  a  measure,  this  comprehensiveness  is  part  of 
all  criticism,  but  with  De  Vere  it  was  a  distinct 
characteristic.  It  almost  became  the  measure  of 
his  ''personal  equation"  ;  and  it  goes  far  toward 
explaining  why  he  could  so  thoroughly  interpret 
Spenser  or  Wordsworth,  while  of  Patmore's  poetry 
he  should  be  merely  appreciative  but  not  illumin- 
ating. De  Vere  was  unusually  quick  to  recognize 
traces  of  a  solid,  universal  greatness  ;  he  was  less 
sensitive  to  beauties  of  an  exotic  or  esoteric  char- 
acter. 

We  live  by  Admiration,  Hope  and  Love  ; 
And,  even  as  these  are  well  and  wisely  fixed, 
In  dignity  of  being  we  ascend. 

These  words,  loved  by  De  Vere,  and  chosen  as 
the  text  of  his  Essays  Chiefly  on  Poetry,  strike  the 
keynote  of  his  attitude  toward  letters  and  toward 
life.  His  criticism  as  a  whole  was  overwhelmingly 
constructive;  and  while  he  abhorred  "sensual" 
or  "sensational"  literature,  materialistic  and  un- 
sound philosophies,  and  whatever  wars  against  the 
soul's  life,  he  still — and  to  the  end — ' '  enjoyed  prais- 
ing as  inferior  men  enjoy  sneering." 

*  Aubrey  de  Vere's  own  comment  on  Lander. 


GERARD   HOPKINS 

Je  trouve  un  singulier  plaisir  a  ddterrer  un  beau  vers  dans  un 
poete  me"connu  ;  il  me  semble  que  sa  pauvre  ombre  doit  etre  console, 
et  se  rejouir  de  voir  sa  pensde  enfin  comprise  ;  c'est  line  re"habilita- 
tion  que  je  fats,  c'est  une  justice  que  je  rends. 

THEOPHILE  GAUTIER. 

IN  the  Jesuit  church  of  St.  Aloysius,  Oxford,  is  a 
holy-water  font  of  vari-coloured  marble  bearing 
this  simple  inscription  : 

In  memory  of 

FATHER  GERARD  HOPKINS,   S.J., 

who  died  June  8th,   1889,  R.   I.  P. 

Sometime  Priest  on  this  Mission. 

Formerly  of  Balliol  College. 

It  was  erected  by  two  devoted  friends  (the  Baron 
and  Baroness  de  Paravicini)  and  stands  to-day  as 
one  of  the  very  few  objective  memorials  of  a  fine 
and  glowing  spirit — a  poet  who,  when  he  shall 
come  into  his  just  inheritance  of  human  praise, 
may  well  be  known  as  the  Crashaw  of  the  Oxford 
Movement.  Very  early  the  imperious  obedience 
of  the  religious  life  took  him  from  a  purely  literary 
career  ;  early,  too,  came  the  great  Silencer. 

Gerard  Manley  Hopkins  was  born  at  Stratford, 
near  London,  28  July,  1844.  It  was  a  year  of 
significance.  The  Oxford  Tracts  had  done  their 
work  ;  the  face  of  religion  was  changed  ;  and  art 
and  literature  were  destined  to  take  on  the  rainbow 
colouring.  That  tremendous  re-discovery  of  the 
Christian  past — that  vision  which  included  the 
mystic  communion  of  all  Saints,  the  Real  and 
sacrificial  Presence  of  the  Living  God,  the  brood- 

70 


GERARD   HOPKINS  71 

ing  empire  of  the  Holy  Ghost  over  an  undivided 
Church,  and  all  the  multitudinous  sacramentalisms 
of  a  living  Catholicity — must  needs  have  stretched 
the  horizon  upon  every  side.  Such  ideas  are 
fountain-heads  of  art  as  well  as  of  faith,  in  the 
second  harvesting.  But  meanwhile  it  was  an 
interval  of  great  spiritual  struggle.  A  few  months 
more  and  John  Henry  Newman  was  to  break  at 
last  from  that  hopeless  Via  Media,  lighting  the 
pathway  for  so  many  other  souls  "ex  umbris  et 
imaginibus  in  veritatem."  All  through  Gerard's 
childhood  and  during  his  preliminary  education  at 
the  Cholmondeley  School,  Highgate,  this  august 
exodus  continued  ;  Faber  and  the  Oratorians  were 
followed  by  Manning,  Patmore,  Aubrey  and 
Stephen  de  Vere,  Adelaide  Procter  and  Mother 
Frances  Raphael  Drane — only  the  angels  of  God 
can  number  them  all.  And  if,  to-day,  we  bow 
down  in  spirit  before  that  mighty  crusade  of  half 
a  century  ago,  what  must  have  been  the  moral 
effect  upon  a  highly-sensitive  contemporary 
spirit?  It  was  an  effect  which  found  expression 
less  in  words  than  in  the  complete  fusing  and 
fashioning  of  the  spiritual  energies  ;  to  those  who 
could  receive  it,  it  provided  both  motive-power 
and  motive  for  existence. 

We  own  no  surprise,  then,  in  discovering  that 
the  wood  of  Gerard  Hopkins'  cross  lay  just 
beyond  his  door-sill.  But  in  the  wise  and  sweet 
economy  of  life,  the  cross  for  most  of  us  is 
pilgrim-staff  as  well.  This  poet's  pathway  was 
not  destined  to  lead  beside  the  pleasant  ways  of 
garden  or  hearthstone  ;  it  was  to  know  conflict 
from  without  and  from  within  ;  but  these  consola- 
tions, more  especially  in  youth,  were  notable. 
By  nature— that  is  to  say,  God — he  had  been 
rarely  dowered.  His  intellect  was  keen  and 
scholarly,  his  imagination  peculiarly  quick,  subtle 


72 THE  POETS'  CHANTRY 

and  original ;  he  was  gifted  musically  and  artisti- 
cally, and  possessed,  in  the  words  of  his  poet- 
friend  Robert  Bridges,  "  humour,  great  personal 
charm,  and  the  most  attractive  virtues  of  a  tender 
and  sympathetic  nature."  Above  and  beyond  all 
this,  his  was  the  awakened  soul ;  and  something  of 
his  absorption  in  spiritual  things  may  be  guessed 
from  the  opening  stanzas  of  a  little  undated  Hymn  : 

Thee,  God,  I  come  from,  to  thee  go  ; 

All  day  long  I  like  fountain  flow 
From  thy  hand  out,  swayed  about 

Mote-like  in  thy  mighty  glow. 

It  was  in  October,  1866,  his  twenty-third  year, 
that  he  was  received  by  Newman  himself  into  the 
fold  of  Catholicity,  finding  there  the  one  un- 
changing haven  of  a  life  in  which — to  a  degree 
mercifully  unknown  by  mediocre  souls — God  willed 
to  decree  not  peace  but  a  sword. 

One  reckons  among  Gerard's  lesser  privileges 
his  youthful  intercourse  with  that  rare  and  cultured 
spirit,  Walter  Pater.  It  was  through  this  friend's 
preparation  that  he  entered  in  1867  upon  his  classi- 
cal first  course  at  Balliol  College,  Oxford.  But 
to  those  fair,  scholastic  precincts  the  young  under- 
graduate had  brought  a  yet  fairer  vision — a  burden 
of  unrest,  indeed,  until  that  vision  should  be 
wrought  into  reality.  Just  how  early  the  ascetic 
and  sacerdotal  ideal  had  taken  possession  of  the 
convert's  heart  one  perceives  from  a  poem  of  great 
beauty,  "  The  Habit  of  Perfection,"  written  in  the 
year  of  his  reception.  All  through  its  stanzas 
rings  the  cry  of  that  great  renunciation  which  was 
soon  to  be  : — 

Elected  Silence  sing  to  me 

And  beat  upon  my  whorled  ear, 

Pipe  me  to  pastures  still  and  be 
The  music  that  I  care  to  hear. 


GERARD   HOPKINS 73 

Shape  nothing1,  lips  ;  be  lovely-dumb  ! 

It  is  the  shut,  the  curfew  sent 
From  there  where  all  surrenders  come, 

Which  only  makes  you  eloquent. 

Be  shelled,  eyes,  with  double  dark 

And  find  the  uncreated  light ; 
This  ruck  and  reel  which  you  remark 

Coils,  keeps  and  teases  simple  sight. 


O  feel-of-primrose  hands,  O  feet 

That  want  the  yield  of  plushy  sward, 

But  you  shall  walk  the  golden  street, 
And  you  unhouse  and  house  the  Lord. 

Those  lines  prepare  us  to  find  the  fiery  dawn  of 
a  religious  vocation  hastening  the  expectant  soul 
upon  her  way.  Gerard  left  Oxford.  He  spent 
some  six  months  at  the  Birmingham  Oratory, 
teaching  in  the  school  and  enjoying  the  future 
Cardinal's  advice  and  friendship.  Then,  in  the 
spring  of  1868 — and  apparently  to  the  surprise  of 
everyone — he  offered  his  life  to  the  Society  of 
Jesus.  Now,  as  he  was  an  incorrigible  indivi- 
dualist, the  wisdom  of  this  all-significant  step  may 
well  have  seemed  an  open  question,  even  to  those 
who  knew  him  best.  But  Newman,  at  least, 
greeted  the  news  approvingly.  "  Don't  call  'the 
Jesuit  discipline  hard,'  "  he  wrote  :  "  it  will  bring 
you  to  Heaven."  So  the  great  and  intricate  sacri- 
fice was  begun.  On  the  bare  objective  side, 
Father  Hopkins'  career  is  quickly  told.  One  hears 
of  him  as  "select  preacher  "  in  London,  and  again 
back  in  Oxford,  at  St.  Aloysius'  church.  The  one 
available  portrait  of  the  young  priest  pictures  him 
during  this  latter  mission  :  it  shows  a  face  of  most 
delicate  and  chastened  beauty,  with  noble  fore- 
head and  chin  of  extraordinary  determination — 


74  THE  POETS'  CHANTRY 

the  face  of  a  youthful  Englishman,  whose  eyes 
might  already  have  known  Gethsemane. 

For  a  while,  and  until  the  sensitive,  harassed 
spirit  almost  broke  beneath  the  strain,  Father 
Gerard  laboured  in  the  slums  of  Liverpool.  Thence 
he  passed  to  a  professorship  in  the  philosophic 
precincts  of  Stonyhurst.  Finally,  in  1884,  having 
been  elected  Fellow  of  the  Royal  University  of 
Ireland,  he  was  appointed  to  the  post  of  classical- 
examiner  at  Dublin.  And  there,  five  years  later, 
he  succumbed  to  a  contagious  fever  and  died.  It 
was  a  bloodless  martyrdom — one  knows  that  now 
— a  story  of  tragic  consecration  to  duty  and  of  a 
heart  predestined  to  suffering.  And  the  poetic 
life  was  but  the  silent,  passionate  undercurrent  to 
this  all-absorbing  ministry — a  life  too  ruthlessly 
mortified  at  first,  then  cultivated  sedulously,  in- 
tricately, but  more  and  more  as  a  refuge  from 
actual  things. 

Gerard  Hopkins  had  written  poetry  as  a  boy ; 
in  fact  (like  Milton  and  Crashaw,  and  some  others 
never  destined  to  attain  their  eminence),  his  verses 
won  him  distinction  at  school.  But  in  the  first 
fervour  of  his  novitiate,  and  doubtless  as  a  costly 
exercise  of  detachment,  he  burned  nearly  all  these 
youthful  poems.  One  fragment  survived,  a 
"Vision  of  Mermaids,"  written  back  in  1862.  Its 
lyric  sweetness  carries  a  momentary  suggestion  of 
Tennyson,  but  in  its  sensuous  love  of  beauty  there 
is  an  abiding  affinity  to  the  poet  of  Endyinion. 
Here  is  a  vignette  of  early  summer,  charming  in 
its  blithe  and  sunny  abandonment : — 

Soon — as  when  Summer  of  his  sister  Spring 
Crushes  and  tears  the  rare  enjewelling", 

And  boasting  "  I  have  fairer  thing's  than  these," 
Plashes  amid  the  billowy  apple-trees 

His  lusty  hands,  in  gusts  of  scented  wind 
Swirling  out  bloom  till  all  the  air  is  blind 


GERARD  HOPKINS  75 

With  rosy  foam  and  pelting1  blossom  and  mists 

Of  driving  vermeil  rain  ;  and,  as  he  lists 
The  dainty  onyx-coronals  deflowers, 

A  glorious  wanton  ; — all  the  wrecks  in  showers 
Crowd  down  upon  a  stream,  and  jostling  thick 

With  bubbles  bugle-eyed,  struggle  and  stick 
On  tangled  shoals  that  bar  the  brook — a  crowd 

Of  filmy  globes  and  rosy  floating  cloud. 

The  melodiousness,  the  simplicity  of  metre  and 
the  colour  of  this  early  poem  are  all  notable  ;  but 
still  one  feels  that  the  poet,  whose  touch  was  most 
indubitably  here,  had  yet  to  "find  himself." 

"  The  Habit  of  Perfection,"  quoted  above  rather 
as  a  page  of  character-revelation  than  as  a  piece 
of  art,  was  written  four  years  later.  It  is  in  all 
ways  more  significant.  For,  while  retaining  that 
delicate  and  exquisite  sweetness,  it  bears  distinct 
prophecy  of  those  characteristics  which  were  to 
mark  the  poet's  maturer  work ;  the  subjectivity 
and  intensity  of  feeling,  the  eccentricity  of  ex- 
pression and  preoccupation  with  spiritual  ideas 
are  all  here  foreshadowed.  It  is,  indeed,  one  of 
the  most  interesting  and  revealing  of  his  poems — 
the  Abrenuntio  of  a  pure  and  cloistral  spirit.  But 
it  came  perilously  near  being  valedictory  as 
well.  For  almost  ten  years  after  he  entered  the 
Jesuit  novitiate,  Gerard  Hopkins'  poetic  labours 
ceased,  and  his  lips  seem  literally  to  have  "shaped 
nothing "  but  the  mighty  offices  of  his  calling. 
When  the  young  Levite  turned  once  more  to  the 
world,  her  immemorial  face  had  manifold  and 
mysterious  meanings  for  him.  With  the  poet's 
sensuous  appreciation  of  the  outer  life  was  to 
mingle  henceforth  a  vein  of  ethical  and  divine 
interpretation.  Omnia  Great  a — had  he  not  weighed 
and  sounded  this  world  of  shadow  and  symbol 
and  enigma?  But  two  realities  abode  steadfast: 
God,  and  the  struggling  souJ  of  man. 


76 THE  POETS'  CHANTRY 

We  will  admit  that  all  this  is  emphatically 
Ignatian — but  it  is  also  emphatically  Catholic;  it 
is  even  the  story  of  every  illumined  soul.  Nature 
is  first  a  pageant  to  us,  and  then  a  process  ;  until 
at  last  we  perceive  it  to  be,  in  Goethe's  words,  the 
"garment  of  God" — and  withal,  the  enveloping 
mantle  of  man.  This  deepening  of  vision  is  very 
noticeable  throughout  Father  Hopkins'  work. 
Yet  always  the  world  was  fresh  to  him,  as  it  is 
fresh  to  children  and  to  the  very  mature.  At 
every  turn,  and  by  sheer  force  of  his  own  vivid 
individuality,  he  was  finding  that  "  something  of 
the  unexplored,"  that  "grain  of  the  unknown" 
which  Flaubert  so  sagely  counselled  de  Maupas- 
sant to  seek  in  all  things,  but  which  none  of  us 
may  ever  hope  to  find  until  we  cease  looking  upon 
life  through  the  traditional  lenses  of  other  eyes. 
Therefore  was  Father  Hopkins  Ignatian  in  his 
own  very  personal  way.  Few  men  have  loved 
Nature  more  rapturously  than  he  ;  fewer  still  with 
such  a  youthful  and  perennial  curiosity.  There 
is  a  tender  excitement  in  his  attitude  toward 
natural  beauty  (whether  treated  incidentally  or  as 
a  parable)  that  is  very  contagious,  and  the  exulta- 
tion of  that  early  and  earthly  "Vision  "  clung  to 
the  Churchman  almost  with  life  itself.  Nature, 
indeed,  was  his  one  secular  inspiration  ;  and  that 
even  she  was  not  wholly  secular  is  evinced  by  the 
characteristic  music  of  his  spring  song  : 

Nothing  is  so  beautiful  as  spring1 — 
When  weeds,  in  wheels,  shoot  long  and  lovely  and  lush  : 
Thrush's  eggs  look  little  low  heavens,  and  thrush 
Through  the  echoing  timber  does  so  rinse  and  ring 
The  ear,  it  strikes  like  lightnings  to  hear  him  sing  ; 
The  glassy  pear-tree  leaves  and  blooms,  they  brush 
The  descending  blue  ;  that  blue  is  all  in  a  rush 
With  richness  ;  the  racing  lambs,  too,  have  fair  their 
fling. 


GERARD  HOPKINS  77 

What  is  all  this  juice  and  all  this  joy? 
A  strain  of  the  earth's  sweet  being  in  the  beginning 
In  Eden  garden.     Have,  get  before  it  cloy, 
Before  it  cloud,  Christ  Lord,  and  sour  with  sinning, 
Innocent  mind  and  May  day  in  girl  and  boy, 
Most,    O    Maid's  child,    thy   choice    and    worthy    the 
winning. 

Here,  at  last,  in  one  of  the  most  hackneyed  of 
poetic  subjects  and  after  an  opening  line  almost 
banal,  we  are  come  upon  an  original  vein  of 
poetry  ;  a  spiritual  motivation,  a  vigour  of  word- 
painting,  and  a  metrical  proficiency  of  very  real 
distinction.  It  was  written  in  1877,  and  its  exis- 
tence argues  for  Father  Hopkins  more  than  a 
mere  dilettante  use  of  the  poetic  faculty.  Another 
poem  of  the  same  year,  "The  Starlight  Night," 
is  almost  equally  striking  in  music  and  in  meta- 
phor. But  it  must  be  acknowledged  that  both  of 
these  poems  bear  traces  of  that  eccentricity,  that 
curious  and  perverse  construction,  which  point 
forward  to  Father  Hopkins'  eventual  excesses. 
Lucidity  was  the  chief  grace  he  sacrificed  as  years 
wore  on  ;  and  his  fondness  for  uncommon  words 
— at  one  moment  academic  and  literate,  at  another 
provincial — did  not  help  matters.  "  Inversnaid  " 
(written  in  1881)  is  an  extreme  instance  of  this 
later  manner  :  there  is  about  it  a  certain  bounding 
and  prancing  charm,  but  in  truth  the  stream's 
highroad  is  sadly  obstructed  by  Anglo-Saxon  and 
other  archaic  undergrowth.  Wiry  heathpacks, 
flitches  of  fern  and  the  groins  of  the  braes  that  the 
brook  treads  through,  send  the  reader's  mind  back 
with  some  ruefulness  to  that  lovely  random  line 
from  the  "  Vision  of  Mermaids  "  : 

To  know  the  dusk  depths  of  the  ponderous  sea  ! 
We  are  not  born  original  in  these  latter  days 


78  THE  POETS'  CHANTRY 

of  literature,  it  would  seem ;  we  must  achieve 
originality — and  often  at  the  cost  of  so  much 
complexity.  Not  a  few  of  us,  indeed,  would 
appear  to  have  been  born  complex,  with  a  con- 
genital impulse  toward  entangling  an  existence 
already  difficult  enough.  But  there  is  one  in- 
eradicable simplicity  about  religious  men  :  they 
are  always  coming  back  upon  God.  To  Him 
they  reach  out,  and  peradventure  attain,  through 
the  mysteries  of  Nature,  through  the  mazes  of 
science  and  abstract  speculation,  even  through 
the  fundamental  intricacies  of  their  own  tempera- 
ment. His  Spirit  they  perceive  brooding  above 
the  patient  earth,  glorifying  and  illumining  her 
travail.  And  so  one  finds  Father  Hopkins'  ulti- 
mate message,  clarion-clear,  in  this  very  direct 
and  characteristic  sonnet  upon  "  God's  Grandeur  " : 

The  world  is  charged  with  the  grandeur  of  God, 

It  will  flame  out  like  shining  from  shook  foil  ; 

It  gathers  to  a  greatness  like  the  ooze  of  oil 

Crushed.     Why  do  men  then  now  not  reck  His  rod  ? 

Generations  have  trod,  have  trod,  have  trod  ; 

And  all  is  seared  with  trade  ;   bleared,  smeared  with 

toil, 
And   bears   man's    smudge,  and  shares    man's  smell  ; 

the  soil 

Is  bare  now,  nor  can  foot  feel  being  shod. 
And  for  all  this,  nature  is  never  spent ; 
There  lives  the  dearest  freshness  deep  down  things  ; 
And  though  the  last  lights  from  the  black  west  went, 
Oh,  morning  at  the  brown  brink  eastwards  springs — 
Because  the  Holy  Ghost  over  the  bent 
World  broods  with  warm  breast,  and  with,  ah,  bright 

wings  ! 

The  vital  and  arresting  quality  of  this  little 
poem  distinguishes  all  of  Gerard  Hopkins'  reli- 
gious poetry  ;  and  it  is  in  his  religious  poetry, 
after  all,  that  he  attained  most  unequivocally. 


GERARD   HOPKINS  79 

There  is  an  invariable  quickness  and  reality  in  his 
work — although  at  moments  it  may  also  be  a  bit 
fantastic — at  the  very  point  where  the  tendency  of 
so  many  others  is  to  become  a  little  cold  or  a  little 
sweet.  One  may  search  for  many  a  long  day 
among  the  treasures  of  English  verse  before 
one  shall  find  such  a  powerful  and  poetic  medita- 
tion upon  the  Holy  Eucharist  as  he  has  left 
us.  We  quote  but  two  stanzas  of  "  Barnfloor  and 
Winepress,"  although  the  entire  poem  ought  to 
have  the  recognition  due  to  a  devotional  classic  : 

Thou  who  on  Sin's  wages  starvest, 
Behold,  we  have  the  Joy  of  Harvest ; 
For  us  was  gathered  the  First-fruits, 
For  us  was  lifted  from  the  roots, 
Sheaved  in  cruel  bands,  bruised  sore, 
Scourged  upon  the  threshing-floor  ; 
Where  the  upper  millstone  roofed  His  Head, 
At  morn  we  found  the  Heavenly  Bread  ; 
And  on  a  thousand  altars  laid, 
Christ  our  Sacrifice  is  made. 

Thou,  whose  dry  plot  for  moisture  gapes, 

We  shout  with  them  that  tread  the  grapes  ; 

For  us  the  Vine  was  fenced  with  thorn, 

Five  ways  the  precious  branches  torn. 

Terrible  fruit  was  on  the  tree 

In  the  acre  of  Gethsemane  : 

For  us  by  Calvary's  distress 

The  wine  was  racked  from  the  press  ; 

Now,  in  our  altar-vessels  stored, 

Lo,  the  sweet  vintage  of  the  Lord  ! 

In  quite  other  vein,  and  of  real  lyric  charm,  is 
Rosa  Mystica.  Father  Hopkins  has  contrived  to 
throw  a  glamour  of  simplicity  and  ingenuousness 
over  thoughts  by  no  means  simple  ;  while  the  use 
of  assonance  and  alliteration  (frequent  and  nearly 
always  felicitous  throughout  his  work)  and  of  the 


8o  THE  POETS'  CHANTRY 

refrain,  provide  a  very  rhythmic  vehicle.  There 
was  a  rose-tree  blooming  once  upon  Nazareth 
Hill,  he  tells  us — with  the  playful  seriousness  of 
some  old  ballad — but  it  passed  from  men's  eyes 
into  the  secret  place  of  God  :  and  cannot  the  heart 
guess  the  name  of  this  sweet  mystery? 

Is  Mary  that  rose  then  ?     Mary  the  tree  ? 

But  the  Blossom,  the  Blossom  there,  who  can  it  be  ? 

Who  can  her  rose  be  ?     It  could  be  but  One  ; 

Christ  Jesus,  our  Lord — her  God  and  her  Son. 

In  the  Gardens  of  God,  in  the  daylight  divine, 
Show  me  thy  Son,  Mother,  Mother  of  mine. 

What  was  the  colour  of  that  Blossom  bright  ? 
White  to  begin  with,  immaculate  white. 

But  what  a  wild  flush  on  the  flakes  of  it  stood, 
When  the   Rose  ran  in  crimsonings  down  the  Cross- 
wood. 

In  the  Gardens  of  God,  in  the  daylight  divine 
I  shall  worship  the  Wounds  with  thee,  Mother  of  mine. 

Though  Francis  Thompson  was,  in  life  and  in 
death,  hailed  as  the  successor  of  Crashaw,  the 
mantle  of  that  mystic  dreamer  fell  even  more  truly 
upon  the  shoulders  of  Gerard  Hopkins.  His  was 
the  same  wistful  pathos  and  resolute  detachment 
from  life's  more  passional  aspects.  In  both  men 
there  was  a  similar  tragic  sensitiveness — an  inevi- 
table recoil  from  the  inconsistency  and  ugliness 
and  corruption  which  are  a  part  of  human  exis- 
tence. So  it  seems  natural  enough,  despite  the 
intervening  centuries,  that  even  the  objective  facts 
of  their  lives  should  bear  a  curious  resemblance  ; 
and  that  both  poets  should  pass,  painfully  but  un- 
reluctantly,  into  the  larger  life,  wearied  and  fore- 
spent  ere  half  their  years. 

But  we  have  yet  to  consider  an  ode  of  sustained 
beauty  and  ecstasy,  his  longest  and  perhaps  most 


FR.  GERARD  HOPKINS,  S.J. 
By  courtesy  of  Fr.  Joseph  Keating,  S.J. 


GERARD  HOPKINS  81 

ambitious  effort,  which,  lacking  a  better  title,  I 
have  ventured  to  call  "  Our  Lady  of  the  Air."  It 
is  built  round  a  unique  and  apt  metaphor  : 

Wild  air,  world-mothering"  Air, 
Nestling"  me  everywhere, 
That  each  eyelash  or  hair 
Girdles  ;  goes  home  betwixt 
The  fleeciest,  frailest-fixed 
Snowflake  ;  that's  fairly  mixed 
•     With  riddles,  and  is  rife 
In  every  least  thing's  life  ; 
This  needful,  never  spent, 
And  nursing  element ; 
My  more  than  meat  and  drink, 
My  meal  at  every  wink  ; 
This  Air  which,  by  life's  law, 
My  lung  must  draw  and  draw, 
Now  but  to  breathe  its  praise — 
Minds  me  in  many  ways 
Of  her,  who  not  only 
Gave  God's  Infinity 
Dwindled  to  Infancy 
Welcome  in  womb  and  breast, 
Birth,  milk  and  all  the  rest, 
But  mothers  each  new  grace 
That  does  now  reach  our  race — 
Mary  Immaculate, 
Merely  a  Woman,  yet 
Whose  presence  power  is 
Great  as  no  goddess's 
Was  deemed,  dreamed  ;  who 
This  one  work  has  to  do — 
Let  all  God's  glory  through, 
God's  glory  which  would  go 
Through  her  and  from  her  flow 
Off,  and  no  way  but  so. 


If  I  have  understood 
She  holds  high  Motherhood 
G 


82  THE  POETS'  CHANTRY 

Towards  all  our  ghostly  good, 
And  plays  in  grace  her  part 
About  man's  beating  heart, 
Laying,  like  air's  fine  flood, 
The  death-dance  in  his  blood  ; 
Yet  no  part  but  what  will 
Be  Christ  our  Saviour  still. 
Of  her  flesh  He  took  Flesh  : 

He  does  take,  fresh  and  fresh, 
Though  much  the  mystery  how, 
Not  flesh  but  spirit  now  ; 
And  makes,  oh,  marvellous, 
New  Nazareths  in  us, 
Where  she  shall  yet  conceive 
Him,  morning,  noon,  and  eve  ; 
New  Bethlems,  and  He  born 
There  evening,  noon,  and  morn — 
Bethlem  or  Nazareth, 
Men  here  may  draw  like  breath 
More  Christ  and  baffle  death  ; 
Who  born  so  comes  to  be 
New  self  and  nobler  me 
In  each  one,  and  each  one 
More  makes,  when  all  is  done, 
Both  God  and  Mary's  Son. 

In  a  passage  beginning — 

Again,  look  overhead 
How  air  is  azured  ; 
Oh,  how  ;  nay,  do  but  stand 
Where  you  can  lift  your  hand 
Skyward — 

the  poet  analyses  the  essential  mission  of  the 
atmosphere,  and  the  blinding,  staggering  possi- 
bilities of  a  universe  unslaked  by  this  "bath  of 
blue."  Then  the  simile  is  brought  to  a  tender 
and  beautiful  conclusion  : — 

So  God  was  God  of  old  ; 
A  Mother  came  to  mould 


GERARD  HOPKINS  83 

These  limbs  like  ours  which  are 
What  must  make  our  Day-star 
Much  dearer  to  mankind  ; 
Whose  glory  bare  would  blind, 
Or  less  would  win  man's  mind. 
Through  her  we  may  see  Him 
Made  sweeter,  not  made  dim  ; 
And  her  hand  leaves  His  light 
Sifted,  to  suit  our  sight. 

There  exist  but  a  few  other  poems  bearing 
Father  Hopkins'  name.  A  short  but  characteristic 
piece,  "  Morning,  Midday  and  Evening  Sacrifice," 
should  be  included  among  the  devotional  lyrics  ; 
also  that  direct  and  manly  "  Hymn  "  referred  to 
earlier.  And  there  is  one  white  rose  of  a  frag- 
ment, so  brief  and  so  exquisite  that  we  give  it 
entire  : — 

HEAVEN    HAVEN. 

(A   NUN   TAKES   THE    VEIL) 

I  have  desired  to  go 

Where  springs  not  fail, 

To  fields  where  flies  no  sharp  and  sided  hail, 
And  a  few  lilies  blow. 

And  I  have  asked  to  be 

Where  no  storms  come, 

Where  the  green  swell  is  in  the  havens  dumb, 
And  out  of  the  swing  of  the  sea. 

Thinking  about  Heaven  makes  all  of  us  wistful ; 
but  it  is  pondering  on  the  tear-stains  and  blood- 
stains of  earth  that  crushes  out  the  joy  of  life. 
Father  Gerard  had,  seemingly  from  boyhood,  a 
dangerous  realisation  of  this  omnipresent  sorrow 
of  living ;  his  own  experience  did  not  tend  to 
lighten  the  burden,  and  throughout  his  later  years 
the  weight  was  well-nigh  intolerable.  Sanely 


84  THE  POETS'  CHANTRY 

enough  he  gauged  the  cause  of  so  much  bitter- 
ness ;  it  was  the  "  blight  man  was  born  for  "  if  he 
happened  to  be  an  idealist — it  was  the  conscious- 
ness of  his  own  too-twisted  nature.  "It  is 
Margaret  you  mourn  for,"  he  told  one  little  Mar- 
garet as  she  grieved  over  the  falling  glory  of 
autumn  ;  but  none  the  less,  outer  conditions  will 
all  along  furnish  the  occasion  of  Margaret's  grief. 
There  cannot  be  any  doubt  that  Father  Hopkins' 
life  in  Dublin  was  a  final  crucifixion  of  spirit  as 
well  as  body.  It  was  not  only  the  monotonous 
and  consuming  toil  of  his  position  as  examiner  in 
the  University ;  it  was  not  merely  the  political 
irregularity  and  unreason  by  which  he  was  perforce 
surrounded  ;  although  we  are  told  that  these  com- 
bined to  plunge  his  final  years  into  a  state  of  utter 
dejection.  One  of  the  sonnets  of  this  period  (all 
of  which  are  coloured  by  an  ominous  and  leaden 
grey)  reveals  his  sense  of  exile — "To  seem  the 
stranger  lies  my  lot — my  life  among  strangers  " — 
and  expresses  his  human  and  priestly  sorrow  that 

Father  and  mother  dear, 
Brothers  and  sisters  are  in  Christ  not  near. 

But  there  is  another  which  would  seem  to  indi- 
cate that  the  cause  of  Father  Hopkins'  darkness 
lay  deeper  down  than  loneliness  (too  familiar  to 
the  sons  of  St.  Ignatius)  or  than  any  normal 
weariness  of  the  day's  work.  Few  lines  of  such 
haunting  sadness  have  come  to  us  from  the  hand 
of  any  Christian  poet : 

Thou  art  indeed  just,  Lord,  if  I  contend 

With  Thee  ;  but,  sir,  so  what  I  plead  is  just, 

Why  do  sinners'  ways  prosper  ?  and  why  must 

Disappointment  all  I  endeavour  end  ? 

Wert  thou  my  enemy,  O  thou  my  Friend, 

How  couldst  thou  worse,  I  wonder,  than  thou  dost 

Defeat,  thwart  me  ?     .         .         .         . 


GERARD   HOPKINS  85 

One  must  needs  surmise  a  great  part  of  this  final 
struggle ;  but  it  would  seem  to  illustrate  that 
spiritual  phenomenon  of  desolation  which  has  im- 
mersed so  many  a  chosen  soul.  For  full  thirty 
years  was  St.  Teresa  in  this  desert  land,  where 
frustration  reigns  in  all  visible  things,  and  to  lose 
the  life  without  finding  it  again  seems  the  guerdon 
of  superhuman  effort.  Of  course,  it  is  impossible 
to  write  healthy  poetry  in  the  depths  of  this  tragic 
experience  ;  and  Father  Hopkins  was  too  true  a 
poet  not  to  realise  the  fact.  He  submitted,  the 
very  year  of  his  death,  his  noble  and  highly 
masterful  apologia  ; 

"To— 

The  fine  delight  that  fathers  thought ;  the  strong 
Spur,  live  and  lancing"  like  the  blowpipe  flame, 
Breathes  once,  and,  quenched  faster  than  it  came, 
Leaves  yet  the  mind  a  mother  of  immortal  song, 
Nine  months  she  then,  nay  years,  nine  years  she  long 
Within  her  wears,  bears,  cares  and  moulds  the  same  : 
The  widow  of  an  insight  lost  she  lives,  with  aim 
Not  known,  and  hand  at  work  now  never  wrong. 

Sweet  fire,  the  sire  of  muse,  my  soul  needs  this  ; 
I  want  the  one  rapture  of  an  inspiration. 
O  then  if  in  my  lagging  lines  you  miss 
The  roll,  the  rise,  the  carol,  the  creation, 
My  winter  world,  that  scarcely  breathes  that  bliss 
Now,  yields  you,  with  some  sighs,  our  explanation. 

His  winter  world  !  It  was  destined  sooner  than 
he  dreamed  to  give  place  to  the  unwaning  spring. 
Robert  Bridges  (to  whose  words  we  turn  once 
again,  because  the  knowledge  of  a  physician  as 
well  as  the  wisdom  of  a  friend  went  into  them) 
declares  that  he  made  no  struggle  for  life  when 
the  fever  of  1889  attacked  him.  He  had  fought 
his  good  fight  and  carried  arms  no  longer  ;  but 
the  God  of  Battles  knew.  And  on  the  8th  of 
June — the  month  he  had  loved  so  well — Gerard 


86  THE  POETS'  CHANTRY 

Hopkins'  soul  marched  quietly  over  the  borderland 
to  victory. 

But  little  remains  to  be  said.  The  poems  have 
been  permitted  to  speak  for  themselves,  and  if 
their  faults  are  conspicuous  enough,  so,  too,  is 
their  unique  and  magnetic  attraction.  No  doubt 
this  is  in  the  nature  of  an  acquired  taste.  They 
were  not  written  for  the  public  (during  their 
maker's  lifetime  scarcely  one  of  them  was  permitted 
to  steal  into  print) ;  they  were  written  for  the  con- 
solation of  the  poet  and  of  a  few  chosen  friends. 
And  to  such  readers  no  concessions  need  be  made. 
Coventry  Patmore,  Robert  Bridges,  and  Richard 
Watson  Dixon  were  of  this  elect  little  company. 
All  were  convinced  of  Father  Hopkins'  rare  poetic 
ability,  of  the  even  "terrible  pathos"  (the  words 
are  Dixon's)  which  tempered  his  work  ;  although 
Patmore  (himself  an  experimentalist)  was  never 
quite  won  over  to  the  metrical  ingenuities  and 
idiosyncrasies  of  his  "new  prosody."  "System 
and  learned  theory  are  manifest  in  all  these  experi- 
ments ;  but  they  seem  to  me  to  be  too  manifest " 
wrote  the  worshipper  of  the  Unknown  Eros:  "I 
often  find  it  as  hard  to  follow  you  as  I  have  found 
it  to  follow  the  darkest  parts  of  Browning."1 

Gerard  Hopkins'  exceedingly  delicate  and  intri- 
cate craftsmanship — and  not  less  the  singularity 
of  his  mental  processes — must,  indeed,  produce 
in  many  minds  an  impression  of  artificiality. 
Yet  nothing  could  be  further  from  the  fact,  for  in 

1  Patmore's  final  verdict  upon  Father  Hopkins,  written  barely 
two  months  after  the  tetter's  death,  is  worth  remembering1 : 

"  Gerard  Hopkins  was  the  only  orthodox  and,  as  far  as 
I  could  see,  saintly  man  in  whom  religion  had  absolutely  no 
narrowing  effect  upon  his  general  opinions  and  sympathies.  A 
Catholic  of  the  most  scrupulous  strictness,  he  could  nevertheless 
see  the  Holy  Spirit  in  all  goodness,  truth,  and  beauty  :  and  there 
was  something  in  all  his  words  and  manners  which  was  at  once 
a  rebuke  and  an  attraction  to  all  who  could  only  aspire  to  be  like 
him." 


GERARD  HOPKINS  87 

all  the  poems  of  his  manhood  there  is  a  poignant, 
even  a  passionate  sincerity.  It  is  quite  true  that 
his  elliptical  and  involved  expression  mars  (for  all 
but  the  very  few  who  shared  his  theories  of  verse) 
more  than  one  poem  of  rare  and  vital  imagining. 
It  is  true  also,  and  of  the  nature  of  the  case,  that 
our  poet  was  to  a  certain  degree  self-centred  in  his 
dream  of  life.  He  was  not  an  egoist ;  but  it  must 
be  obvious  that  from  first  to  last  he  was  an  in- 
dividualist. And  in  our  human  reckoning  the 
individualist  pays,  and  then  he  pays  again  ;  and 
after  that,  in  Wilde's  phrase,  he  keeps  on  paying. 
Yet  in  the  final  count  his  chances  of  survival  are 
excellent.  Outside  of  the  poets,  Father  Hopkins' 
work  has  had  little  recognition  or  understanding; 
but  his  somewhat  exotic  influence  might  easily  be 
pointed  out  in  one  or  two  of  the  foremost  Catholic 
singers  of  to-day  and  yesterday.  And,  for  all  its 
aloofness,  the  young  priest's  work  struck  root  in 
the  poetic  past.  Its  subtle  and  complex  fanciful- 
ness  and  its  white  heat  of  spirituality  go  back  in 
direct  line  to  that  earlier  Jesuit,  Father  Southwell  ; 
while  one  would  wager  that  Hopkins  knew  and 
loved  other  seventeenth-century  lyrists  beside  the 
very  manifest  Crashaw.  It  is  by  no  means  with- 
out significance,  moreover,  to  note  that  Coventry 
Patmore's  great  Odes  and  Browning's  masterpiece, 
The  Ring  and  the  Book,  both  appeared  in  that 
memorable  1868  when  Gerard  entered  upon  his 
novitiate.  Those  were  the  days  when  a  young 
poet  might,  almost  without  public  comment,  fling 
out  to  the  world  his  daring  and  beautiful  gift. 

Gerard  Hopkins'  poems  are  best  known  in 
a  few  precious  anthologies.  It  is  a  truism  to 
remark  that  merely  great  poetry  is  seldom  popular ; 
although  the  greatest  of  all  poetry — that  of  Homer 
and  Dante  and  Shakespeare— strikes  a  universal 
echo  in  the  heart  of  man.  It  is  delusive,  and  it 


88  THE  POETS'  CHANTRY 

is  written  not  as  an  escape  from  life  but  as 
the  inevitable  and  impassioned  expression  of  life 
itself.  Now  Gerard  Hopkins'  artistry  was  not  of 
this  supreme  sort.  He  was  essentially  a  minor 
poet ;  he  wrote  incredibly  little  and  he  interpreted 
but  few  phases  of  human  experience.  Yet,  with 
the  minor  poet's  distinctive  merit,  he  worked  his 
narrow  field  with  completeness  and  intensity. 
And  who  can  deny  that  the  very  quality  which 
seemed,  at  worst,  an  eccentric  and  literate  manner- 
ism, proved  itself  in  the  finer  passages  a  strikingly 
creative  and  authentic  inspiration  ? 


COVENTRY    PATMORE 

THE  poet,  Patmore  himself  once  declared  in  a 
moment  of  luminous  paradox,  "occupies  a  quite 
peculiar  position — somewhere  between  that  of  a 
Saint  and  that  of  Balaam's  Ass "  :  and  save  for 
the  fact  that  both  saint  and  ass  are  notoriously 
humble  in  demeanour,  it  seems  impossible  that 
any  phrase  should  more  suggestively  crystallise 
his  own  lifelong  attitude.  With  meet  dramatic 
insight,  Mr.  John  Sargent  chose  this  poet  as 
model  for  his  Prophet  Ezekiel,  for  to  the  sense 
of  friend  and  foe  alike  there  played  about  him 
flashes  of  the  untranslatable  Vision,  echoes  of  the 
Voice  Crying  in  the  Wilderness.  From  the  days 
of  his  vivid  and  self-conscious  childhood,  through 
that  maturity  of  passionate  antagonisms  and 
inviolate  fealties,  into  the  prophetic  old  age, 
ominous,  aloof,  yet  strangely  tender,  Coventry 
Patmore  was  at  each  moment  a  unique  and  com- 
pelling personality.  Aristocrat,  pessimist,  scholar, 
poet  of  human  love  and  of  transcendent  mysticism, 
he  stood  as  a  stumbling-block  and  a  foolishness 
to  the  Philistines  of  his  age.  He  himself  loved 
and  hated  strongly  :  and  in  the  eternal  justice  it 
has  been  decreed  that  strongly,  too,  should  he  be 
loved  and  hated — a  scandal  to  the  timid  or  un- 
believing multitude,  a  seer  to  the  few  who  cared 
to  understand. 

From  the  first,  there  was  a  singular  interde- 
pendence between  Patmore's  life  and  his  literary 
work :  a  consistent  absorption  in  certain  ideals 
which  must  always  be  rare  in  human  nature. 

89 


go  THE  POETS'  CHANTRY 

Not  that  he  was  free  from  vagaries  ;  but  his  pre- 
judices and  perversities  even  now  are  "excellently 
intelligible,"  and  a  certain  proud  integrity  of  soul 
forbids  us  to  separate  the  poet  from  the  man. 
Together  then,  as  one  single  entity,  should  the 
life  record  and  the  art  record  be  studied. 

Coventry  Kersey  Dighton  Patmore  was  born 
at  Woodford,  in  Essex,  23  July,  1823.  From 
his  mother,  an  austere  woman  of  Scottish  descent, 
he  seems  to  have  received  little  save  the  gift  of 
life  ;  in  his  father  he  found  not  only  the  insepar- 
able companion  but  almost  the  sole  instructor  of 
his  youth.  Peter  George  Patmore  was  himself  a 
literary  man  of  versatile  parts,  exemplifying  that 
not  unusual  combination  of  strong  individuality 
and  feeble  character.  From  very  childhood, 
Coventry  spent  hours  in  his  father's  library  ;  to- 
gether the  two  read  Dante,  Chaucer,  Shakespeare, 
and  selections  from  all  the  great  English  classics ; 
while  at  night  this  not  unliberal  education  was 
supplemented  by  visits  to  the  best  playhouses, 
or  to  the  homes  of  "  Barry  Cornwall  "  and  others 
of  the  so-called  Cockney  School.  It  was  doubt- 
less a  desultory  method,  yet  it  proved  more  effec- 
tive than  might  many  a  wiser  one.  And  when, 
between  his  twelfth  and  fifteenth  years,  the  boy 
manifested  keen  interest  in  mathematics  and  ex- 
perimental science,  his  father — with  customary 
indulgence  and  apparently  at  some  pecuniary 
inconvenience — fitted  for  his  use  a  little  labora- 
tory. To  the  end  of  his  life,  our  poet  was  wont 
to  refer  with  zest  to  his  investigations  there,  even 
asserting  that  he  had  in  those  early  years  dis- 
covered a  new  chloride  of  bromine. 

But  in  the  life  of  so  transcendent  a  thinker,  it 
is  the  spiritual  experiences,  however  youthful  and 
fugitive,  which  retain  permanent  interest.  The 
elder  Patmore  seems  to  have  been  what  is  now 


COVENTRY  PATMORE  91 

known  as  a  "  reverent  agnostic,"  and  Coventry 
naively  tells  us  that  until  his  twelfth  year  he  was 
an  agnostic,  too.  He  had,  indeed,  received  no 
definite  religious  instruction  ;  but  coming  at  that 
time  upon  some  little  book  of  devotion,  he  was 
impressed  with  a  gasp  "  what  an  exceedingly  fine 
thing  it  would  be  if  there  really  were  a  God  " 
with  whom  he  might  live  on  terms  of  love  and 
obedience.  It  was  the  first  of  those  illuminations 
or  angel-visits  of  which  our  poet  was  vaguely 
conscious  all  through  his  youth  :  visits  which  as 
yet  left  slight  impression  upon  the  outer  life,  but 
which  cast  upon  the  things  of  earth  sudden 
gleams  of  interpretation,  and  in  one  memorable 
instance  forced  upon  him  a  most  intense  and 
lasting  apprehension  of  the  supreme  worth  of 
personal  purity. 

But  poetry,  that  elect  lady  and  predestined 
passion  of  his  life,  early  claimed  some  initiative 
allegiance.  From  Patmore's  own  account,  it  was 
at  about  the  age  of  sixteen  (in  "The  River,"  and 
"The  Woodman's  Daughter")  that  he  first  turned 
seriously  to  verse-making  ;  writing  then  also  a 
remarkable  little  essay  on  Macbeth,  published 
later  in  the  Pre-Raphaelite  Germ.  The  fact  that 
an  original  tragedy  was  also  in  contemplation 
would  scarcely  be  worth  noting  save  for  the  sub- 
jective experience  which  it  induced.  For  by 
another  wholly  characteristic  illumination,  the 
boy  student  came  to  perceive  that  such  tragedy 
as  might  inspire  the  highest  poetry  "ought  to 
present  the  solution,  rather  than  the  mere  con- 
clusion, by  death,  of  the  evils  and  disasters  of 
life."  Here,  assuredly,  was  no  ordinary  fruit  of 
youthful  speculation,  but  the  basis  of  that  philo- 
sophic and  fundamental  simplicity  which  Patmore 
was  so  uncommonly  to  attain.  May  it  not,  in 
truth,  be  recognised  as  a  note  of  that  Divine 


92  THE  POETS'  CHANTRY 

Wisdom  which  will  neither  be  withstood  nor 
denied  by  its  chosen  vessel  ?  For  in  casting 
about  for  this  possible  solution  of  a  difficult 
world,  our  poet  first  came  into  definite  contact 
with  the  Christian  idea.  The  conception  of  the 
God-Man,  the  Word  made  Flesh,  took  immediate 
root  in  an  intellect  and  heart  peculiarly  open, 
peculiarly  sensitive  to  beauty  and  to  truth.  Al- 
most half  a  century  later,  Coventry  Patmore  de- 
clared that  this  thought  of  God  incarnate  in  Jesus 
Christ  had  from  that  moment  remained  to  him 
"  the  only  reality  worth  seriously  caring  for." 

Kindred  experiences  were  more  disquieting.  A 
visit  to  relatives  in  Scotland  (devout  members  of 
the  Free  Kirk),  much  "  profitable  discourse  "  and 
an  unsuccessful  attempt  at  extemporaneous  prayer, 
sent  Coventry  back  to  London  in  a  revulsion  of 
feeling  which  almost  threatened  unbelief.  But 
the  early  vision  remained  intact,  and  excesses 
born  of  much  zeal  and  little  knowledge  gradually 
made  way  for  a  new  advance. 

Meanwhile  Peter  George  Patmore's  parental 
pride  urged  his  son  on  to  publication,  and  in  1844 
the  first  little  volume,  Poems,  was  issued  from 
Moxon's  press.  The  home  circle  was,  of  course, 
enthusiastic,  and  even  the  literary  world  took 
some  slight  notice.  "A  very  interesting  young 
poet  has  blushed  into  bloom  this  season,"  wrote 
Robert  Browning;  Leigh  Hunt  and  the  "Cock- 
ney "  contingent  were  vastly  appreciative ;  and 
Bulwer  Lytton  sent  a  most  discerning  letter  of 
sincere  praise  and  admonition.  Several  of  the 
reviews  were,  on  the  other  hand,  actually  abusive, 
and  in  his  later  years  Patmore  himself  came  to 
regard  these  early  poems  with  undisguised  con- 
tempt. To  the  critic  of  to-day,  untempered  praise 
and  blame  seem  alike  superfluous.  They  were 
simply  experimental  verses  of  pathetic  and  pic- 


COVENTRY  PATMORE  93 

turesque  character,  the  vigour  of  their  word- 
painting  being  as  undeniable  as,  upon  one  side, 
a  certain  hectic  quality,  or  upon  the  other,  an 
imperfect  sense  of  rhythm.  At  their  best,  as,  for 
instance,  in  "The  River,"  one  seems  to  detect  a 
weak  solution  of  Christabel : 

Beneath  the  mossy  ivied  bridge 

The  River  slippeth  past : 

The  current  deep  is  still  as  sleep 

And  yet  so  very  fast ! 

There's  something1  in  its  quietness 

That  makes  the  soul  aghast.  .  .  . 

In  1845,  just  a  year  after  his  son's  little  triumph, 
Peter  George  Patmore  was  overtaken  by  financial 
troubles  and  left  England.  It  meant  a  radically 
new  era  for  Coventry.  Practically  penniless,  he 
was  now  left  dependent  upon  his  own  resources  ; 
while  the  hot-house  atmosphere  of  sympathetic 
and  uncritical  praise  was  simultaneously  with- 
drawn. So  the  young  swimmer  made  his  plunge, 
and  contrived  to  prove  that  he  was  not  of  the  sink- 
ing sort.  None  the  less,  it  was  a  year  of  arduous 
struggle,  Patmore's  work  for  the  current  Reviews 
scarcely  sufficing  to  pay  for  the  humble  lodgings 
which  he  and  a  younger  brother  occupied  together. 
"  Who  is  your  lean  young  friend  with  the  frayed 
shirt-cuffs?"  inquired  Monckton  Milnes  one  even- 
ing of  Mrs.  Procter,  when  the  impecunious  poet 
had  been  dining  at  her  house.  But  after  reading 
the  early  verses  and  learning  more  of  their  author, 
the  future  Lord  Houghton  made  brave  reparation 
for  this  "heartless  flippancy."  Through  his  assist- 
ance, Coventry  obtained,  in  1846,  the  post  of 
assistant  librarian  at  the  British  Museum,  and  the 
friendship  thus  opened  up  proved  thenceforth  of 
mutual  profit. 

It  was  during  those   grey  days  that   Patmore 


94  THE  POETS'  CHANTRY 

made  the  acquaintance  of  Tennyson— then  also 
the  occupant  of  a  modest  apartment  "up  two  or 
three  flights  of  stairs."  Together  they  discussed 
letters,  together  they  dined,  together  they  walked 
half  the  nights  away ;  and  although  the  elder  poet 
had  not  yet  attained  universal  recognition,  he  was 
to  the  devoted  Coventry  a  font  of  perfectness. 
Years  later,  when  a  breach  had  severed  the  in- 
timacy, Patmore's  proud  and  essentially  original 
spirit  used  to  refer  bitterly  to  the  days  when  he 
had  followed  Tennyson  about  "  like  a  dog." 

But  infinitely  more  potent  than  any  other  in- 
fluence upon  our  poet's  youth  was  that  of  a  woman, 
Emily  Augusta  Andrews,  destined  to  create  for 
him  one  of  the  ideal  unions  of  literary  history. 
She  became  the  wife  of  Coventry  Patmore,  after  a 
brief  courtship,  in  1847  (her  twenty-fourth  and  his 
twenty-fifth  year),  and,  to  the  end,  the  exquisite 
intimacy  and  dignity  of  their  love  served  as  a 
veritable  initiation  into  the  mysteries  of  life. 
The  mingled  simplicity  and  stateliness  of  Emily 
Patmore,  her  strange  beauty — perpetuated  by 
Woolner,  Millais,  and  Browning1 — her  selfless  de- 
votion, her  wit  and,  withal,  her  practical  wisdom, 
come  down  to  us  upon  the  testimony  of  nearly  all 
who  were  privileged  to  know  her.  And  the  gentle 
sway  which  she  exercised  over  the  heart  and  mind 
of  her  husband  was  absolute  until  her  death.  "  I 
have  been  thinking  to-day,"  Coventry  wrote  in 
1860,  when  the  great  shadow  was  already  falling 
across  his  hearthstone,  "of  all  your  patient,  per- 
sistent goodness,  your  absolutely  flawless  life,  and 
all  your  amiable,  innocent  graces."  In  another 
place  he  declares  that  her  love  revealed  to  him 
what  was  to  prove  the  basic  philosophy  of  his  life 
and  work :  "The  relation  of  the  soul  to  Christ  as 
his  betrothed  wife  is  the  key  to  the  feeling  with 

1  "  A  Face  "  :  Dramatis  Persona. 


COVENTRY  PATMORE  95 

which  prayer  and  love  and  honour  should  be 
offered  to  Him.  She  showed  me  what  that  re- 
lationship involves  of  heavenly  submission  and 
spotless,  passionate  loyalty." 

A  second  volume  of  poems,  containing,  among 
others,  "Tamerton  Church  Tower,"  "The  Yew- 
berry,"  "The  Falcon,"  was  published  by  Patmore 
in  1853.  Its  simplicity — bare,  and  at  moments 
almost  crude — was  an  intentional  protest  against 
the  more  wilful  metres  just  then  affected  by 
Browning  and  even  Tennyson.  Its  realism  may 
perhaps  be  one  fruit  of  our  poet's  sympathy  with 
the  pre-Raphaelites ;  although  that  "last  rub 
which  polishes  the  mirror"  (a  watchword  Patmore 
himself  is  said  to  have  furnished  the  Brotherhood) 
was  the  quality  it  most  conspicuously  lacked. 
Yet  in  spite  of  much  imperfectness  and  some 
monotony,  there  are  strange,  searching  gleams  of 
metaphysical  insight  in  these  romantic  pieces ; 
and  with  curious  premonition,  the  bright  par- 
ticular star  was  that  charming  lyric  "Eros." 

But  the  magnum  opus  of  Patmore's  early  life 
was  at  hand.  That  New  Song,  "the  first  of 
themes,  sung  last  of  all,"  had  long  been  trem- 
bling upon  his  lips:  in  The  Angel  in  the  House 
it  found  its  full  and  perfect  utterance.  The  theme 
— daring,  precisely  because  it  was  so  simple,  so 
universal,  and  to  the  vulgar  mind  so  common- 
place— was  a  glorification  of  happy  nuptial  love. 
In  itself,  the  graceful  and  very  simple  romance 
scarcely  justifies  repetition.  "  Par  la  grace  in- 
finie^  Dieu  les  mit  au  monde  ensemble  "  ;  and  so 
in  the  surpassing  pain  and  joy  of  love,  they  woo 
and  wed.  There  are  no  memorable  obstacles,  no 
heroic  sacrifices  ;  it  all  passes  in  the  conventional 
shadow  of  an  English  deanery;  and  like  the 
delicious  fairy  tales  of  old,  they  live  happily  ever 
afterward — and  have  many  children  !  But  in 


96  THE  POETS'  CHANTRY 

this  quiet  domestic  idyll  one  is  conscious  of  the 
first  man  and  the  first  woman,  of  the  last  man 
and  the  last  woman,  and  of  God,  in  whom  Love 
finds  its  source.  Patmore's  rare  insight  into  the 
elemental  human  consciousness,  his  reality  and 
delicacy  of  emotion,  form  the  warp  of  the  poem  ; 
albeit  its  woof  includes  the  homeliest  details  of 
"sun  and  candle-light."  Here  is  one  beautiful 
fragment,  the  first  recognition  of  love  between 
Felix  and  Honoria.  With  the  latter's  sisters, 
they  are  seated  one  summer  morning  in  the 
shadow  of  the  grim  Druid  rocks 

That  scowled  their  chill  gloom  from  above, 
Like  churls  whose  stolid  wisdom  mocks 
The  lightness  of  immortal  love. 
And,  as  we  talked,  my  spirit  quaff 'd 
The  sparkling  winds  ;  the  candid  skies 
At  our  untruthful  strangeness  laugh'd  ; 
I  kissed  with  mine  her  smiling  eyes  ; 
And  sweet  familiarness  and  awe 
Prevail'd  that  hour  on  either  part. 
And  in  the  eternal  light  I  saw 
That  she  was  mine  ;  although  my  heart 
Could  not  conceive,  nor  would  confess 
Such  contentation  ;  and  there  grew 
More  form  and  more  fair  stateliness 
Than  heretofore  between  us  two. 

Our  poet's  Primal  Love  was  essentially  of  the 
Sacraments  ;  and  early  in  his  song — even  while 
seeking  expression  for  things  "too  simple  and 
too  sweet  for  words  " — he  struck  the  note  of  his 
characteristic  message  :— 

This  little  germ  of  nuptial  love 
Which  springs  so  simply  from  the  sod, 
The  root  is,  as  my  song  shall  prove, 
Of  all  our  love  to  man  and  God. 


COVENTRY  PATMORE  97 

With  this  root,  indeed,  rather  than  with  any 
potential  flowering,  the  poem  is  mainly  con- 
cerned. Yet  there  is  an  increasing  tendency, 
notably  throughout  the  Preludes,  toward  a  mys- 
tical interpretation  of  sexual  love.  The  "  pathos 
of  eternity  "  has  blown  across  the  face  of  passion  : 
and  in  the  Victories  of  Love  (as  the  latter  part 
of  the  work  was  called)  there  is  even  more  of 
this  divine  pathos  than  there  is  of  nuptial  joy. 

Although  the  Angel  was  never  completed  accord- 
ing to  Patmore's  original  design,  few  of  us  will 
feel  that  it  could  desirably  be  longer.  The  last 
word  is  spoken  in  that  extraordinary  "  Wedding 
Sermon,"  which  brings  the  poem  to  a  close. 
Here,  where  the  claims  of  body  and  spirit  are 
reconciled  with  so  sweet  and  austere  an  eloquence, 
we  realise  that  the  home  of  love  is  no  longer  upon 
our  humble  earth.  Out  from  the  house  of  human 
felicity  must  the  angel  now  adventure — out  into 
realms  higher  and  more  loving :  although  to  men 
of  goodwill  the  body's  bond  may  still  reveal 
itself  as 

All  else  utterly  beyond 

In  power  of  love  to  actualise 

The  soul's  bond  which  it  signifies. 

Here,  for  those  who  could  receive  it,  was  antici- 
pated the  whole  tremendous  doctrine  of  Patmore's 
future  odes  ! 

The  metrical  scheme  of  the  Angel — an  iambic 
octosyllabic  line,  rhyming  throughout  the  First 
Part  in  quatrains,  throughout  the  Second  in 
couplets — has  often  been  subjected  to  ridicule. 
It  is,  in  fact,  a  metre  trembling  perilously  upon 
the  border  of  the  commonplace,  and  lending  itself 
with  staggering  ease  to  parody  and  perversion. 
But  the  poet  had  chosen  it  deliberately  as  the 
vehicle  best  suited  to  a  simple  and  for  the  most 
H 


98  THE  POETS'  CHANTRY 

part  joyous  story ;  and  in  the  main,  he  avoided 
the  pitfalls  both  of  his  form  and  his  theme  to  a 
marvel.  There  is  no  denying  a  certain  obvious 
quality  to  the  Angel  in  the  House.  But  those 
who  find  it  merely  "  sweet"  or  "innocuous" 
must  have  missed  the  more  transcendent  message 
of  the  Wedding  Sermon,  and  of  those  interesting 
Preludes  which,  chorus-like,  precede  and  inter- 
pret the  various  cantos.  "  The  Spirit's  Epochs," 
the  "  Daughter  of  Eve,"  and  many  another  of 
these  lyrics  are  of  singular  beauty  and  power — 
as,  for  instance,  this  pregnant  stanza  of  "  Un- 
thrift "  : 

Ah,  wasteful  woman,  she  who  may 
On  her  sweet  self  set  her  own  price, 
Knowing  man  cannot  choose  but  pay, 
How  has  she  cheapened  paradise  ; 
How  given  for  naught  her  priceless  gift, 
How  spoil'd  the  bread  and  spill'd  the  wine, 
Which,  spent  with  due  respective  thrift, 
Had  made  brutes  men,  and  men  divine. 

Doubtless  it  was  this  rarer  quality,  coupled  with 
Patmore's  eternally  real  tenderness,  which  attracted 
the  immediate  appreciation  of  the  poets  themselves. 
Tennyson  believed  it  "  one  of  the  very  small 
number  of  great  poems  which  the  world  has  had"; 
Father  Gerard  Hopkins  (who  knew  the  work  in  a 
later  edition  which  his  own  criticism  had  helped  to 
perfect)  declared  that  "to  dip  into  it  was  like  open- 
ing a  basket  of  violets."  And  Ruskin,  both  in 
season  and  out  of  season,  proclaimed  that  the 
Angel  ought  to  become  "  one  of  the  most  blessedly 
popular"  poems  in  our  language.  At  last,  and 
after  much  early  neglect,  his  words  were  fulfilled. 
Patmore's  work  became  the  poetic  idol  of  Eng- 
land :  its  colouring  of  popular  taste  was  reflected 
in  Owen  Meredith's  Lucilet  as  in  Woolner's  My 


COVENTRY  PATMORE  99 

Beautiful  Lady;  and  before  the  author's  death 
almost  a  quarter  of  a  million  copies  had  been 
sold. 

In  a  most  real  sense  this  idyll  of  domestic  love 
was  the  fruit  of  the  poet's  union  with  Emily  Pat- 
more.  He  himself  declared  that  to  the  "  subtlety 
and  severity "  of  his  wife's  poetic  taste  the  work 
owed  "  whatever  completeness  it  has,  not  to  men- 
tion many  of  the  best  thoughts,  which  stand 
verbatim  as  she  gave  them  to  me."  Just  here  it 
may  be  wise  to  remark  that  Coventry  Patmore 
was  an  impressionist  in  all  statements  of  fact,  that 
(in  the  words  of  his  friend  Edmund  Gosse)  "  he 
talked  habitually  in  a  sort  of  guarded  hyper- 
bole "  ;  hence  his  writings  and  recorded  conversa- 
tions abound  in  the  most  excessive  appreciation 
or  —  its  opposite !  There  seems,  however,  no 
doubt  that  Emily  Patmore  was  responsible  not 
merely  for  the  inspiration  of  the  Angel^  but  for 
much  of  its  actual  form.  The  seal  of  her  firm, 
frail  little  hand  is  upon  its  beauties  and  its  limita- 
tions ;  and  without  her  revelation  of  human 
tenderness,  her  prodigal  self-sacrifice  as  wife  and 
mother,  the  poem  had  scarcely  been  possible.  So 
about  the  brief  dedication  of  the  finished  work 
there  hung  a  double  tragedy.  It  was  "  To  the 
memory  of  her  by  whom  and  for  whom  I  became 
a  Poet," — for  she  had  died  one  year  before  its 
completion. 

In  the  summer  of  1862,  after  suffering  for  five 
years  from  consumption,  Patmore's  wife  passed 
bravely  and  peacefully  out  of  the  little  circle  which 
she  had  made  in  very  truth  "a  world  of  love  shut 
in,  a  world  of  strife  shut  out."  Slight  as  were  the 
poet's  means,  he  had  spared  no  effort  that  Emily 
should  be  "as  much  cared  for  as  any  duchess  "  ; 
and  when  the  break  at  last  came,  his  anguish 
was  acute.  The  "  Azalea  "  ode,  which  records  an 


ioo  THE  POETS'  CHANTRY 

experience  of  this  time,  vibrates  with  a  poignancy 
almost  insufferable.  Wakened  by  the  perfume  of 
his  wife's  azalea  flower,  and  momentarily  oblivious 
of  his  loss,  the  poet  suffers  a  strange  repetitional 
agony  : 

At  dawn  I  dream'd,  O  God,  that  she  was  dead, 

And  groaned  aloud  upon  my  wretched  bed, 

And  waked,  ah  God,  and  did  not  waken  her, 

But  lay,  with  eyes  still  closed, 

Perfectly  bless'd  in  the  delicious  sphere 

By  which  I  knew  so  well  that  she  was  near, 

My  heart  to  speechless  thankfulness  composed. 

Till  'gan  to  stir 

A  dizzy  somewhat  in  my  troubled  head — 

It  was  the  azalea's  breath,  and  she  was  dead  ! 

The  warm  night  had  the  lingering  buds  disclosed, 

And  I  had  fall'n  asleep  with  to  my  breast 

A  chance-found  letter  press'd 

In  which  she  said, 

"  So,  till  to-morrow  eve,  my  Own,  adieu  ! 

Parting's  well  paid  with  soon  again  to  meet, 

Soon  in  your  arms  to  feel  so  small  and  sweet, 

Sweet  to  myself  that  am  so  sweet  to  you  !  " 

Almost  equally  pathetic  were  Patmore's  efforts 
to  be  "mother  and  father,  too,"  to  his  six  young 
children,  his  impatience  at  infantine  perversity, 
and  the  bitter  self-accusings  which  followed. 
One  of  the  best  known  among  his  shorter  odes, 
"The  Toys,"  traces  its  source  back  to  the  rocky 
path  of  those  sad  days.  Rocky  enough  in  all 
truth  it  was,  yet  upon  its  way  one  flower  blossomed 
into  bloom  —  Emily  Honoria,  the  poet's  eldest 
daughter — rising  as  best  she  might  to  be  care- 
taker of  the  little  family,  companion  and  con- 
fidante to  the  father  himself. 

Coventry  Patmore's  own  health  had  become  so 
much  impaired  by  the  long  strain  of  anxiety  and 


COVENTRY  PATMORE  101 

sorrow,  that  in  1864  he  obtained  leave  of  absence 
from  the  British  Museum  for  a  few  months'  travel 
in  Italy.  It  was  arranged  that  he  should  join 
Aubrey  de  Vere  in  Rome  ;  but,  on  the  whole,  the 
bereaved  poet  seems  to  have  anticipated  the  trip 
without  enthusiasm.  "  I  expect,"  he  wrote  to  that 
wise  little  Emily  Honoria,  "to  be  very  dull  and 
miserable  for  the  first  two  or  three  weeks,  until  I 
get  to  Rome  ;  but  when  I  am  there  I  shall  be  all 
right,  for  nobody  can  be  dull  or  miserable  where 
Mr.  de  Vere  is." 

A  more  compelling,  though  as  yet  an  un- 
acknowledged, magnet  was  drawing  Patmore  to 
the  Eternal  City.  For  almost  ten  years — during 
which  time  he  stood  as  a  "High"  Anglican — a 
shadowy  but  colossal  vision  of  the  Church 
Catholic  had  been  looming  before  his  conscious- 
ness, alternately  claiming  and  repulsing  his  affec- 
tions. The  Catholic  position,  he  tells  us,  had 
early  been  revealed  to  him  as  so  logically  perfect 
as  almost  to  imply  an  absence  of  life  :  while  from 
his  reading  of  St.  Thomas  he  discovered  two 
luminous  facts ;  first,  the  eminent  reality  of 
Catholic  devotional  literature  ;  secondly,  that 
"true  poetry  and  true  theological  science  have 
to  do  with  one  and  the  same  ideal,  and  that  .  .  . 
they  differ  only  as  the  Peak  of  Teneriffe  and  the 
table-land  of  Central  Asia  do."  Yet  the  unalter- 
able repugnance  of  his  wife  Emily  (who  was  the 
daughter  of  a  Dissenting  minister,  and  all  her  life 
"invincibly"  prejudiced  and  terrified  by  some 
imaginary  spectre  of  Papistry  !)  had  long  seemed 
a  tenable  argument  against  the  momentous 
change.  In  point  of  fact,  what  the  poet  actually 
needed,  each  day  more  imperiously,  was  simply 
the  gift  of  resolute  faith.  And  so,  pilgrim-like, 
with  unerring  instinct,  he  travelled  back  that  old, 
old  road  which  leads  to  Rome. 


102  THE  POETS'  CHANTRY 

Once  in  the  Papal  city,  Aubrey  de  Vere  intro- 
duced him  into  a  Catholic  circle  of  notable  grace 
and  distinction  ;  and  here,  with  "  deliberate  speed, 
majestic  instancy,"  he  continued  his  search  after 
truth.  It  was  not  an  easy  struggle.  We  have 
the  whole  story  in  his  little  "Autobiography"  of 
the  spirit ;  and  it  proves  that  while  the  man's 
reason  was  soon  convinced,  his  will  remained 
faltering  and  unpersuaded.  The  further  he  ad- 
vanced— stepping  into  the  battle  of  truth  and 
error,  he  calls  it,  instead  of  being  merely  a  spec- 
tator— the  more  vehemently  developed  his  own 
natural  reluctance.  After  several  weeks  of  this 
ordeal,  flesh  warring  against  spirit  and  reason 
against  conscience  in  the  age-old  strife  of  centri- 
petal and  centrifugal  force,  it  flashed  upon  our 
poet  that  nothing  but  the  definite  act  of  submis- 
sion— the  experimental  and  bridge-burning  leap — 
could  effect  the  reconciliation  he  sought.  It  was 
late  at  night  when  he  reached  this  decision  ;  but, 
like  the  importunate  widow  of  the  Gospels,  Pat- 
more  rushed  from  his  hotel  to  the  Jesuit  monastery, 
and  would  be  denied  neither  by  rule  nor  padlock. 
Father  Cardella,  the  learned  and  patient  priest 
who  had  been  his  instructor,  refused  to  permit  the 
great  step  in  this  precipitate  haste.  But  the  neo- 
phyte made  then  and  there  his  general  confession  ; 
and  two  or  three  days  later  he  was  received  into 
the  Holy  Roman  Catholic  and  Apostolic  Church. 

The  first  person  to  be  apprised  of  this  sub- 
mission was  an  English  lady  then  resident  in 
Rome,  Miss  Marianne  Caroline  Byles,  a  convert 
and  close  friend  of  Cardinal  Manning.  "  I  had 
never  before  beheld  so  beautiful  a  personality," 
Coventry  declared  with  his  usual  ardour,  "and 
this  beauty  seemed  to  be  the  pure  effulgence  of 
Catholic  sanctity."  The  world  was  soon  to  know 
her  as  Mary  Patmore,  the  poet's  second  wife. 


COVENTRY  PATMORE  103 

1  'Tired  Memory,"  an  ode  of  great  beauty,  inter- 
prets that  delicate  and  difficult  experience  by 
which  the  new  love  was  reconciled  to  that  other — 
infinitely  mourned,  infinitely  cherished,  scarcely 
yet  resigned  to  the  "stony  rock  of  death's  in- 
sensibility." In  the  pathos  and  intimacy  of  its 
self-revelation,  the  poem  is  not  unworthy  of  com- 
parison with  the  Vita  Nuova.  Emily  Patmore, 
when  death  seemed  quite  near,  had  begged  her 
husband  to  wed  again  :  so  now  in  a  passionate 
reverie  he  brings  her  his  confession  of  the  strange 
new  joy  which  will  not  be  denied. 

O  my  most  dear, 

Was't  treason,  as  I  fear  ? 

the  poet  muses.  And  with  brief  stroke  of  sur- 
passing delicacy  he  traces  Love's  "chilly  dawn," 
the  coming  of  this  fair  stranger  with  her  starlike, 
half-remembered  graces,  the  tired  heart's  reluctant 
stirring, 

And  Nature's  long  suspended  breath  of  flame 

Persuading"  soft  and  whispering  Duty's  name, 

Awhile  to  smile  and  speak 

With  this  thy  Sister  sweet,  and  therefore  mine  ; 

Thy  Sister  sweet, 

Who  bade  the  wheels  to  stir 

Of  sensitive  delight  in  the  poor  brain, 

Dead  of  devotion  and  tired  memory, 

So  that  I  lived  again, 

And,  strange  to  aver, 

With  no  relapse  into  the  void  inane, 

For  thee  ; 

But  (treason  was't  ?)  for  thee  and  also  her. 

There  were  more  than  subjective  difficulties  in 
the  way  of  a  marriage,  however.  Miss  Byles 
would  seem  to  have  taken  a  more  or  less  formal 
vow  of  celibacy,  from  which,  later  on,  she  was  duly 
dispensed  ;  while  the  poet,  on  his  side,  impetu- 


io4  THE  POETS'  CHANTRY 

ously  and  quite  unreasonably  left  Rome  upon  the 
discovery  that  his  fiancee  was  possessed  of  a  large 
personal  fortune.  By  the  good  agency  of  friends 
all  was  eventually  reconciled.  Patmore  returned 
to  England  to  prepare  his  little  family  for  the  new 
mother,  and  on  18  July,  1864,  the  couple  were 
married  by  Cardinal  Manning  at  the  church  of 
Saint  Mary  of  the  Angels,  Bayswater. 

Of  course,  neither  the  second  marriage  nor  the 
religious  change  was  welcome  news  to  our  poet's 
English  friends.  Yet,  in  the  home-circle  at  least, 
Mary  Patmore's  victory  was  complete.  The  few 
letters  of  hers  which  have  been  preserved  evince 
the  most  gentle,  even  scrupulous,  tenderness  to- 
ward Patmore's  children,  a  fastidious  interest  in 
his  literary  work,  and  a  certain  sweet  austerity 
which  must  have  been  distinctly  piquante  to  her 
outspoken  and  imperious  husband.  There  is 
something  deliciously  daring  in  her  shy  com- 
ments upon  the  Angel:  "It  is  a  shame  for  you 
to  have  been  initiated  into  a  thing  or  two  quite 
solely  feminine,"  she  writes  to  Coventry  ;  and  yet 
again  she  refers  to  the  "Wedding  Sermon"  as 
"not  so  high  in  some  parts  as  Thomas  a 
Kempis,  than  whom  nobody  ought  to  be  lower, 
to  my  thinking."  It  sounds  just  a  little  bit  formid- 
able !  Yet  that  uncompromising  elevation  of  soul, 
and  the  vestal  reserve  of  manner  which  few  friends 
were  able  to  pierce,  were  in  reality  the  best  pos- 
sible foil  for  Patmore's  passionately  sensuous  yet 
mystical  nature.  All  of  his  most  searching  work 
— the  Odes,  perhaps  the  lost  "Sponsa  Dei,"  and 
the  complete  finding  of  his  own  soul — were  accom- 
plished during  his  life  with  her. 

Shortly  after  this  marriage  the  poet's  lungs 
were  found  to  be  so  seriously  affected  that  it  be- 
came necessary  to  leave  London  and  the  Museum 
permanently.  And  so  during  the  main  part  of 


COVENTRY  PATMORE  105 

Mary  Patmore's  life  they  resided  first  at  "  Heron's 
Ghyl"  (an  extensive  Sussex  estate  which  Coventry 
spent  several  healthful  years  in  supervising  and 
improving)  and  later  at  old  Hastings  by  the  sea. 
The  circumstances  of  the  family  were,  of  course, 
vastly  more  felicitous  than  during  the  early  days  ; 
and  now  for  the  first  time  in  his  life  Patmore 
found  leisure  for  continuous  concentrated  study, 
as  well  as  for  that  quiet  meditation  which  is  the 
seed-time  of  creative  thought.  His  preoccupation 
with  theology  proved  more  absorbing  than  ever  ;' 
so  that  he  often  spent  four  hours  a  day  upon  the 
works  of  the  more  mystical  saints — Bernard  and 
John  of  the  Cross,  St.  Teresa's  Road  to  Perfection , 
and  always  the  monumental  Summa.  In  the  sym- 
bolic teaching  of  Emanuel  Swedenborg,  also,  he 
found  many  points  of  agreement,  being  wont  to 
declare  that  the  latter's  "Catholic  doctrine  with- 
out Catholic  authority  "  would  deceive,  if  possible, 
the  very  elect. 

A  slender  volume  of  nine  Odes,  printed  for  pri- 
vate distribution  in  1868,  inaugurated  Coventry 
Patmore's  second  and  greatest  poetic  period. 
Superficially,  there  may  seem  but  slight  con- 
tinuity between  these  searching  and  paradoxical 
poems  and  the  domestic  Angel — yet  in  essence 
they  are  close  akin.  For  the  master-passion  of 
Patmore's  life  and  the  abiding  inspiration  of  his 
poetry  were  identical :  his  work  was  one  long 
Praise  of  Love.  And  so  it  was  to  an  artistic  and 
mystical  development  rather  than  to  any  tem- 
peramental breach  that  these  odes  bore  witness. 
Our  poet  spoke,  indeed,  a  language  little  intel- 
ligible to  his  countrymen  ;  and  the  white  heat  of 
his  passion,  his  seemingly  esoteric  psychology, 
and  his  uneven  but  arresting  metres  inspired 
dismay  rather  than  any  other  emotion.  Few  of 
those  men  (poets,  for  the  most  part)  to  whom  the 


io6  THE  POETS'  CHANTRY 

precious  volumes  had  been  sent  showed  the 
slightest  realisation  of  this  "grey  secret  of  the 
east  "  ;  and  only  the  most  perfunctory  acknowledg- 
ments reached  the  author.  So,  with  characteristic 
disdain,  Patmore  consigned  all  of  the  edition  re- 
maining to  his  own  log  fire.  " Tired  Memory" 
was  one  of  the  collection  ;  so  also  was  the  brief 
and  beautiful  "Beata"  ;  " Faint  Yet  Pursuing,"  an 
exquisite  piece  with  what  we  now  know  as  the  true 
Patmorean  flavour  ;  and  the  resurgent  loveliness 
of  "  Deliciae  Sapientias  de  Amore."  With  these 
were  two  or  three  ironic  Jeremiads  of  political  and 
philosophic  nature,  and  "  Pain  " — which  no  other 
modern  English  poet,  except  perhaps  Francis 
Thompson,  could  have  written.  The  poet's 
brooding  and  scornful  reflections  as  he  watched 
the  flames  consume  these  first  fruits  of  his  richest 
thought  scarcely  tended  to  commute  the  pessim- 
istic opinion  he  had  already  formed  upon  latter- 
day  tastes  and  institutions. 

The  genuine  significance  of  these  Odes,  both 
metrically  and  philosophically,  can  scarcely  be 
overstated.  To  discerning  readers,  even  the  ex- 
tracts already  quoted  must  reveal  a  divine  in- 
tensity, a  subtlety  of  poetic  feeling,  beside  which 
all  of  Patmore's  early  work  seems  tentative  and 
imperfect.  Their  verse  form  (which  the  poet 
somewhat  vaguely  described  as  based  upon  cata- 
lexis)  has  successfully  defied  all  but  the  broadest 
critical  analysis,  and  its  effect  would  seem  to 
depend  almost  wholly  upon  some  intuition,  alike 
musical  and  emotional,  of  pause  and  rhythm.1 

1  "  It  is  in  the  management  of  the  pauses — in  the  recognition  of 
the  value  of  time-beats — that  Coventry  Patmore's  supremacy  in 
the  Ode  form  lies.  In  his  '  domestic  verses,'  he  uses  rhyme  in 
places  where  Tennyson  would  not  have  dreamed  of  it — recklessly, 
audaciously,  but  in  his  highest  moods  ...  he  treats  rhyme  as  an 
echo."  Maurice  Francis  Egan  :  "Ode  Structure  of  Coventry 
Patmore,"  in  Studies  in  Literature. 


COVENTRY  PATMORE  107 

Yet  it  provides  an  ideally  perfect  vehicle  for 
the  intermittent  stress  and  reticence,  the  amazing 
passional  surge,  the  mystic  and  often  scholastic 
reasoning  of  the  poems  themselves.  Always 
fascinating  and  usually  dangerous  has  it  proved 
as  a  model  to  younger  poets  ;  but  at  its  best  and 
in  the  master's  hand,  there  is  an  impetuous  fresh- 
ness about  this  ode  form  which  is  the  next  thing 
to  a  new-blown  wind  flower.  And  this  spon- 
taneity was  no  mere  illusion.  Patmore  spent 
months,  even  years,  in  maturing  the  matter  of  his 
greatest  odes,  but  their  actual  form  was  often  the 
work  of  two  or  three  hours. 

"  I  have  hit  upon  the  finest  metre  that  ever  was 
invented,  and  on  the  finest  mine  of  wholly  un- 
worked  material  that  ever  fell  to  the  lot  of  an 
English  poet,"  Coventry  Patmore  wrote  exult- 
antly when  the  Unknown  Eros  was  in  preparation. 
This  mine  was  mystic  Catholic  theology,  in  par- 
ticular the  nuptial  relations  of  the  soul  to  its  God, 
and  in  general  that  essential  and  passionate 
humanity  which  is  at  the  core  of  nearly  every 
doctrine  of  the  Church.  But  here  was  a  task  to 
stagger  Orpheus  himself  had  Orpheus  turned 
Christian  !  For  how  translate  the  secrets  of  the 
saints  to  a  gaping  multitude  ?  How  teach  men 
what  love  meant,  and  what  the  Word  made  Flesh 
implied?  How  draw  back  the  veil  of  mystery  and 
symbol  and  allegory  without  breaking  in  upon 
the  "Divine  Silence"?  In  an  agony  of  concen- 
tration, in  prayer  and  fasting,  the  poet  toiled  on, 
still  falling  short  of  that  infinite  "  beauty  and 
freedom  "  which  the  work  demanded,  were  it  to 
be  done  at  all.  Patmore  reached  at  length  his 
own  explanation  of  this  failure  :  not  until  these 
things  should  become  controlling  realities  in  his 
own  spiritual  life  could  he  sing  of  them  worthily  ! 
No  shade  of  religious  doubt  had  crossed  his 


io8  THE  POETS'  CHANTRY 

understanding  or  his  conscience  from  the  moment 
of  his  reception  into  the  Catholic  Church.  Yet, 
with  his  brave,  resolute  candour,  he  has  confessed 
that  the  quiet  and  absolute  regnancy  of  faith  be- 
fore which  his  soul  longed  to  bow  was  denied  for 
many  a  weary  year.  More  particularly  was  he 
conscious  of  something  perfunctory  in  his  service 
of  the  Most  Blessed  Virgin — of  an  imperfect  har- 
mony with  the  mind  of  the  Church  in  this  imme- 
morial devotion.  So  he  resolved  upon  a  curious 
and  conspicuous  act,  half  votive,  half  penitential, 
very  humble  and  popular  and  un-Patmorean — 
namely,  a  pilgrimage  to  Lourdes  !  The  poet  set 
out  toward  the  grotto  of  Bernadette's  vision  with 
a  beautiful  crushing  of  personal  repugnance, 
asking  much  of  the  good  God,  giving  what  in 
him  lay.  The  result  is  best  told  in  his  own 
words  : 

"  On  the  fourteenth  of  October,  1877,  I  knelt  at 
the  Shrine  by  the  River  Gave,  and  rose  without 
any  emotion  or  enthusiasm  or  unusual  sense  of 
devotion,  but  with  a  tranquil  sense  that  the 
prayers  of  thirty-five  years  had  been  granted. 
I  paid  two  visits  of  thanksgiving  to  Lourdes  in 
the  two  succeeding  Octobers,  for  the  gift  which 
was  then  received  and  which  has  never  since  for 
a  single  hour  been  withdrawn." 

One  more  dogma  was  thus  revealed  to  Coventry 
Patmore  ;  not  merely  as  a  convenient  "form  of 
sound  words  "  but  as  a.  fact  with  vital  bearing  upon 
the  rest  of  life.  Mary  of  Nazareth  became  to  him 
thenceforth  the  essential  womanhood — the  symbol 
and  prototype  of  humanity,  nature,  the  body.  In 
her  littleness  and  sweetness  was  found  the  perfect 
complement  to  God's  infinitude :  she  was  Regina 
Mundi  as  well  as  Regina  Coeli,  foreshadowing  the 
triumph  of  every  faithful  soul.  A  great  epic  upon 
the  Marriage  of  the  Virgin  was  to  have  celebrated 


COVENTRY  PATMORE  109 

this  theme,  but  it  never  saw  completion.  How- 
ever, in  that  extraordinary  surge  of  creative  energy 
which  peace  brought  to  our  poet,  the  nucleus  of  it 
all  stole  into  one  exquisite  ode,  "The  Child's 
Purchase."  This  poem,  written  late  in  1877, 
stands  in  a  true  sense  as  the  crown  and  flower  of 
the  Unknown  Eros,  the  consummation  of  Patmore's 
poetic  career.  Opening  with  the  parable  of  a  little 
child  who  receives  from  his  mother  a  golden  coin 
— which  at  first  he  plans  to  spend,  "  or  on  a  horse, 
a  bride-cake,  or  a  crown,"  but  which,  at  the  last, 
he  brings  back  wearily  as  guerdon  for  her  own 
sweet  kiss — the  poet  dedicates  his  gift  of  precious 
speech  to  this  most  gracious  Lady.  Then  follows 
the  glorious  invocation  : 

Ah,  Lady  Elect, 

Whom  the  Time's  scorn  has  saved  from  its  respect, 

Would  I  had  art 

For  uttering  that  which  sings  within  my  heart ! 

But,  lo, 

Thee  to  admire  is  all  the  art  I  know. 

My  Mother  and  God's  ;  Fountain  of  miracle  ! 

Give  me  thereby  some  praise  of  thee  to  tell 

In  such  a  song 

As  may  my  Guide  severe  and  glad  not  wrong, 

Who  never  spake  till  thou'dst  on  him  conferr'd 

The  right,  convincing  word  ! 

Grant  me  the  steady  heat 

Of  thought  wise,  splendid,  sweet, 

Urged  by  the  great,  rejoicing  wind  that  rings 

With  draught  of  unseen  wings, 

Making  each  phrase,  for  love  and  for  delight, 

Twinkle  like  Sirius  on  a  frosty  night ! 

Aid  thou  thine  own  dear  fame,  thou  only  Fair, 

At  whose  petition  meek 

The  Heavens  themselves  decree  that,  as  it  were, 

They  will  be  weak  ! 

Thou  Speaker  of  all  wisdom  in  a  Word, 
Thy  Lord  ! 


no  THE  POETS'  CHANTRY 

Speaker  who  thus  couldst  well  afford 
Thence  to  be  silent — ah,  what  silence  that 
Which  had  for  prologue  thy  "  Magnificat !  "- 


Ora  pro  me  ! 

Sweet  Girlhood  without  guile, 
The  extreme  of  God's  creative  energy  ; 
Sunshiny  Peak  of  human  personality  ; 
The  world's  sad  aspirations'  one  Success  ; 
Bright  Blush,  that  sav'st  our  shame  from  shame- 

lessness  ; 

Chief  Stone  of  stumbling  ;  Sign  built  in  the  way 
To  set  the  foolish  everywhere  a-bray  ; 
Hem   of  God's    robe,    which    all   who   touch    are 

heal'd  ; 


Peace-beaming  Star,  by  which  shall  come  enticed, 

Though  nought  thereof  as  yet  they  weet, 

Unto  thy  Babe's  small  feet, 

The  mighty,  wand'ring  disemparadised, 

Like  Lucifer,  because  to  thee 

They  will  not  bend  the  knee  ; 

Ora  pro  me  t 

Desire  of  Him  whom  all  things  else  desire ! 
Blush  aye  with  Him  as  He  with  thee  on  fire  ! 
Neither  in  his  great  Deed  nor  on  His  throne — 
O,  folly  of  Love,  the  intense 
Last  culmination  of  Intelligence, — 
Him  seem'd  it  good  that  God  should  be  alone  ! 
Basking  in  unborn  laughter  of  thy  lips, 
Ere  the  world  was,  with  absolute  delight 
His  Infinite  reposed  in  thy  Finite  ; 
Well-matched  :  He,  universal  being's  Spring, 
And  thou,  in  whom  are  gather'd  up  the  ends  of 

everything  ! 
Ora  pro  me  ! 

Throughout  that  supreme  series  to  the  Unknown 


COVENTRY  PATMORE  m 

Eros,  Patmore  leads  his  reader  into  a  realm  of 
palpitating  beauty,  truth  and  love.  The  sensuous 
nature,  by  no  means  annihilated  in  this  new  life  of 
the  spirit,  is  glorified  and  inconceivably  satisfied. 
The  capacity  of  the  soul  for  good  (which  our  poet 
always  contended  was  "in  proportion  to  the 
strength  of  its  passions  ")  is  infinite,  because  these 
passions  are  marshalled  into  the  orderly  service  of 
God.  Here,  at  last,  the  Body  receives  its  meet 
salutation,  not  as  "our  Brother  the  Ass,"  but  as 
the 

Little  sequestered  pleasure-house 

For  God  and  for  His  Spouse  ; 

and  human  love  becomes  a  ladder  leading  up  to 
mystic  visions  of  Christ  as  the  Love,  the  Bride- 
groom of  the  soul.  Pre-eminently  in  the  old 
exquisite  myth  of  Eros  and  Psyche,  but  scarcely 
less  in  the  experience  of  every  loving  and  suffering 
life,  Patmore  found  this  all-but-unspeakable  truth 
prefigured,  and  he  played  upon  the  motif  in  ode 
after  ode  of  marvellous  beauty  and  tenderness. 

The  exceeding  intimacy  with  which  our  poet 
clothed  (or  shall  one  say — unclothed  ?)  his  tran- 
scendent theme  has  proved  distasteful  to  many  a 
devout  but  colder  mind  ;  to  Aubrey  de  Vere,  who 
begged  the  suppression  of  the  Psyche  odes,  to 
Cardinal  Newman,  who  never  became  quite  recon- 
ciled to  thus  "  mixing  up  amorousness  with  re- 
ligion." The  same  exception,  obviously,  might 
be  taken  to  the  Canticle  of  Canticles  and  to  much 
subsequent  mystical  writing.  For  love,  as  Coven- 
try Patmore  understood  it,  was  "the  highest  of 
virtues  as  well  as  the  sweetest  of  emotions  .  .  . 
being  in  the  brain  confession  of  good ;  in  the 
heart,  love  for,  and  desire  to  sacrifice  everything 
for  the  good  of  its  object ;  in  the  senses,  peace, 
purity  and  ardour."  In  this  most  elemental  of 


ii2  THE  POETS'  CHANTRY 

human  passions  he  found  the  one  perfect  and 
consistent  symbol  of  the  Divine  Desire  and  the 
Divine  Espousals. 

And  without  this  rare  ability  to  translate  spiritual 
truth  into  the  terms  of  a  vibrating  humanity— 
this  impassioned  and  mystic  sensuousness  (which 
some,  doubtless,  will  label  a  "  divine  sensuality") 
— Patmore  could  scarcely  have  escaped  the  snares 
which  yawn  before  every  poet  conscious  of  a 
message.  In  point  of  fact,  he  was  never  more 
supremely  the  poet  than  when  he  was  most  radi- 
cally the  seer.  Never,  save  possibly  in  one  or  two 
political  arraignments,  does  the  personal  note 
derogate  from  the  permanence  of  his  poetry ; 
never  once,  for  all  his  vehemence  of  belief,  does 
he  descend  into  didacticism.  Nor  does  his  sym- 
bolic analysis  of  human  emotion  even  for  a  moment 
lessen  the  intense  reality  of  pain  and  of  love 
throughout  his  song.  Here  is  one  little  "Fare- 
well," scarcely  surpassed  in  its  quiet  heartbreak  : 

With  all  my  will,  but  much  against  my  heart, 

We  two  now  part. 

My  Very  Dear, 

Our  solace  is,  the  sad  road  lies  so  clear. 

It  needs  no  art, 

With  faint,  averted  feet 

And  many  a  tear, 

In  our  opposed  paths  to  persevere. 

Go  thou  to  East,  I  West. 

We  will  not  say 

There's  any  hope,  it  is  so  far  away. 

But,  O,  my  Best, 

When  the  one  darling  of  our  widowhead, 

The  nursling  Grief, 

Is  dead, 

And  no  dews  blur  our  eyes 

To  see  the  peach-bloom  come  in  evening  skies, 

Perchance  we  may, 

Where  now  this  night  is  day, 


From  a  photograph  by  Barraud 


COVENTRY  PATMORE  113 

And  even  through  faith  of  still  averted  feet, 
Making  full  circle  of  our  banishment, 
Amazed  meet ; 

The  bitter  journey  to  the  bourne  so  sweet 
Seasoning  the  termless  feast  of  our  content 
With  tears  of  recognition  never  dry. 

In  "  Amelia"  (Patmore's  favourite  poem,  but 
scarcely  his  readers')  we  find  this  ode-form  com- 
bined with  the  simpler  narrative  theme  of  his 
earlier  days.  And  once  again  we  are  forced  to 
feel  how  dangerous  and  difficult  a  thing  truth  to 
the  letter  of  life  may  become.  Yet  there  are 
perfect  touches  in  the  poem  ;  suggestions  of  Pat- 
more's really  great  sea  music,  and  Nature-flashes 
like  that 

young  apple-tree,  in  flush'd  array 
Of  white  and  ruddy  flow'r,  auroral,  gay, 
With  chilly  blue  the  maiden  branch  between. 

"  St.  Valentine's  Day"  and  many  another  lyric 
bear  witness  to  this  poet's  searching  observation 
of  natural  beauty,  yet  this  was  less  an  object  in 
itself  to  him  than  a  sensitive  inise  en  scene  for  the 
human  drama.  To  the  core  he  was  a  symbolist ; 
and  of  natural  phenomena  he  seems  to  have  felt 
what  he  somewhere  declared  of  natural  science — 
that  its  only  real  use  was  "to  supply  similes  and 
parables"  to  the  spiritually  elect. 

The  year  1880  brought  sorrow  back  into  Pat- 
more's life  in  the  sudden  death  of  his  wife  Mary. 
Her  loss  proved  the  first  of  a  bitter  trilogy. 
Scarcely  two  years  later,  his  well-loved  daughter 
Emily  (Sister  Mary  Christina,  as  she  had  become, 
of  the  Society  of  the  Holy  Child  Jesus)  died  in 
her  near-by  convent.  The  passing  of  this  rare 
and  understanding  spirit,  from  childhood  so  deeply 
in  sympathy  with  his  own — a  poet  herself,  and 
one  of  the  best  critics  of  her  father's  work — can 


ii4  THE  POETS'  CHANTRY 

scarcely  have  been  less  than  a  sundering  of  the 
poet's  very  life.  And  then  there  was  Henry,  Pat- 
more's  third  son,  whose  brief  novitiate  of  pain 
and  promise  came  to  a  close  in  1883.  His  little 
bark  had  never  been  very  seaworthy,  yet  in  spite 
of  serious  illness  he  left  poetic  fragments  of 
decided  beauty  and  originality.  "  At  twenty  years 
of  age,  his  spiritual  and  imaginative  insight  were 
far  beyond  those  of  any  man  I  ever  met,"  Coventry 
declared ;  and  it  was  his  belief  that  had  the  boy 
lived  to  maturity  his  poetic  achievement  might 
have  surpassed  his  own. 

The  decade  commencing  in  1884  Patmore  de- 
voted to  a  series  of  varied  and  stimulating  prose 
essays,  contributed  mainly  to  the  St.  fames' s  Gazette. 
Politics,  religion,  economics,  art,  literature,  archi- 
tecture, were  in  turn  touched  upon  with  powerful 
and  trenchant  originality.  The  most  significant 
of  these  critiques  were  subsequently  collected, 
partially  in  Principle  in  Art,  1889,  partially  in 
that  precious  volume,  Religio  Poetce,  1893.  A 
little  book  of  pregnant  aphorisms  and  brief,  un- 
equal essays,  The  Rod,  the  Root,  and  the  Flower, 
closed  this  prose  sequence  in  1895. 

Meanwhile  the  Twilight  of  the  Gods  was  draw- 
ing apace  upon  this  inspired  and  imperious  spirit. 
Flashes  of  comfort  there  were,  indeed — the  de- 
voted companionship  of  Harriet  Robson,  who 
became  our  poet's  third  wife,  and  that  little  late- 
born  son,  Epiphanius.  In  the  friendship  of  Mrs. 
Meynell,  too,  Patmore  found  throughout  these 
latter  years  one  of  God's  best  gifts,  an  exquisite 
community  of  ideals.  One  of  his  latest  essays 
was  an  appreciation  of  her  own  work  both  in 
prose  and  verse  ;  and  through  her  he  came  into 
close  touch  with  her  friend  Francis  Thompson, 
helping  on  the  critical  world  to  a  recognition  of 
his  genius. 


COVENTRY  PATMORE  115 

During  all  this  time  the  poet's  heart  was  grow- 
ing intermittently  weaker,  and  his  lungs,  long 
undermined,  caused  increasing  anxiety.  At 
Lymington,  whither  he  had  removed,  there  were 
repeated  attacks  and  convalescences  ;  and  at  last, 
in  the  November  of  1906,  a  congestion  set  in. 
"What  about  going  to  Heaven  this  time?" 
Patmore  asked  his  physician,  with  weary  but 
irrepressible  humour.  The  next  day,  after  re- 
ceiving the  last  Sacraments,  his  agony  began. 
His  words  were  broken  prayers  and  thoughts  for 
those  about  him..  "I  love  you,  dear,"  he  whis- 
pered to  his  wife  when  the  end  was  very  near, 
"but  the  Lord  is  my  Life  and  my  Light."  Into 
this  larger  life  he  passed  painlessly  on  26  Novem- 
ber, 1906  ;  and  in  the  humble  habit  of  St.  Francis' 
tertiary,  his  body  was  borne  to  its  long  rest  in 
the  little  sea-coast  cemetery. 

Coventry  Patmore's  career  as  poet  had  closed 
full  twenty  years  earlier,  with  the  "collected" 
edition  of  1886  :  consequently  his  place  in  our 
literature  has  long  passed  the  first  tentative  stage. 
The  waxings  and  wanings  of  contemporary  taste 
— the  flood-tide  of  the  Angel,  the  ebb-tide  of  the 
earlier  odes,  the  ominous  calm  of  the  final  years — 
no  longer  any  whit  affect  his  reputation.  It  has 
attained  a  solid  and  certain  degree  of  permanence. 
He  has,  quite  indisputably,  survived  :  as  a  name 
indeed  to  the  "general  reader,"  but  as  a.  fact  in 
the  great  confraternity  of  song.  Francis  Thomp- 
son was  eager  in  acknowledging  his  debt  to  "this 
strong,  sad  soul  of  sovereign  song  "  ;  while  others 
not  so  eager  have  gathered  the  riches  of  his  vine- 
yard. It  is  even  possible  to  say  that  the  chances 
of  any  just  appreciation  of  his  work  are  greater 
to-day  than  they  were  yesterday,  and  that  probably 
they  will  be  greater  to-morrow  than  they  are  to- 
day. For  in  the  literary  world,  as  in  the  philo- 


n6  THE  POETS'  CHANTRY 

sophic,  mysticism — the  symbolic  interpretation  of 
life — is  once  again  becoming  a  potent  factor.  At 
the  same  time,  a  certain  analytical  brutality  has 
accustomed  latter-day  readers  to  face  reality,  even 
to  crave  reality.  Each  of  these  tendencies  is 
favourable  to  Patmore,  creating  an  audience 
(larger,  though  never  large  !)  which  his  poetry 
may  in  time  both  delight  and  dominate. 

"I  have  written  little,  but  it  is  all  my  best," 
he  wrote  in  one  of  his  Prefaces  ;  * '  I  have  never 
spoken  when  I  had  nothing  to  say,  nor  spared 
time  or  labour  to  make  my  words  true.  I  have 
respected  posterity ;  and  should  there  be  a  pos- 
terity which  cares  for  letters,  I  dare  to  hope  that 
it  will  respect  me."  He  did,  in  fact,  write  little, 
and  not  one  of  the  great  works  he  planned  was 
ever  completed.  Neither  can  all  of  this  little  be 
rightly  termed  his  best.  His  style  was  nervous 
and  unequal  ;  capable  of  the  most  breathless 
perfection  both  of  passion  and  of  music,  but 
capable  also  of  perversity  and  a  curious  common- 
placeness.  Yet  the  most  fastidious  posterity  shall 
respect  him.  He  was,  in  his  great  moments,  one 
of  our  supreme  lyric  artists.  He  sounded  the 
heart-beats  with  poignant  and  unforgettable  truth- 
fulness. He  may  be  said  to  have  created  a  verse- 
form  of  powerful  originality.  And  then,  his  was 
that  fusing  imagination  (the  crowning  gift  of 
genius  !)  which  transmutes  reason  and  emotion 
with  equal  facility  into  one  "agile  bead  of  boil- 
ing gold." 

But  it  is  not  merely  with  Patmore's  poetry — nor, 
for  that  matter,  with  his  prose — that  the  critical 
world  must  one  day  reckon.  It  is  pre-eminently 
with  his  poetic  philosophy.  Teaching  in  his  verse 
only  by  suggestions  of  rare  beauty,  but  through- 
out the  essays  with  increasing  definition  and 
completeness,  he  formulated  a  very  consistent 


COVENTRY  PATMORE  117 

rationale  of  life,  love,  and  God.  It  was  a  mystical 
superstructure  reared  upon  the  foundation  of 
Christian  dogma,  an  interpretation  of  the  "corol- 
laries of  belief."  In  another  sense  it  may  be  called 
the  psychology  of  sex,  since  in  the  mysteries  of 
manhood  and  womanhood  Patmore  found  the 
heavens  above  and  the  earth  beneath  explained. 
God  he  apprehended  as  the  great  positive,  mas- 
culine magnet  of  the  universe — the  soul  as  the 
feminine  or  receptive  force ;  and  in  this  con- 
junction of  first  and  last  lay  the  source  of 
all  life  and  joy.  These  sexual  characteristics  he 
detected  in  literature  and  art,  as  intellectual 
strength  or  sensible  beauty  was  found  to  pre- 
dominate ;  while  in  the  workings  of  conscience 
there  was  a  similar  duality,  the  rational  and  the 
sensitive  soul.  But  as  the  poems  have  shown, 
it  was  the  great  sacrament  of  nuptial  love  which 
most  clearly  manifested  the  mystery. 

The  whole  of  life  is  womanhood  to  thee, 
Momently  wedded  with  enormous  bliss, 

his  Psyche  cries  out  to  her  immortal  lover :  and 
even  so  did  Patmore  conceive  of  the  life-giving 
God.  Originally,  he  declared,  there  were  three 
sexes  (which  in  the  Holy  Trinity,  Truth,  Love 
and  Life,  found  their  divine  prototype),  and  it  was 
mainly  in  order  to  achieve  this  complete,  but  for- 
gotten, homo  that  "nuptial  knowledge"  became 
the  one  thing  needful.  Woman,  he  writes  in 
that  daring  and  suggestive  essay,  Dieu  et  Ma 
Dame,  "is  'homo'  as  well  as  the  man,  though 
one  element,  the  male,  is  suppressed  and  quies- 
cent in  her,  as  the  other,  the  female,  is  in  him  ; 
and  thus  he  becomes  the  Priest  and  representative 
to  her  of  the  original  Fatherhood,  while  she  is 
made  to  him  the  Priestess  and  representative  of 
that  original  Beauty  which  is  'the  express  image 


n8  THE  POETS'  CHANTRY 

and  glory  of  the  Father,'  each  being  equally, 
though  not  alike,  a  manifestation  of  the  Divine  to 
the  other."  Upon  this  symbol,  conjugal  love, 
Patmore  indeed  based  the  body  of  his  work  :  yet 
he  cannot  justly  be  accused  (as  it  would  seem  that 
Swedenborg,  in  his  much-discussed  work,  must 
needs  be)  of  sacrificing  to  it  the  eternal  reality — 
love  divine.  Chastity  our  poet  recognised  as  the 
final  and  perfect  flowering  of  this  fair  bud,  and  it 
was  the  "  Bride  of  Christ"  alone  who  fully  at- 
tained here  below  to  that  double  sex  which  shall 
distinguish  the  regenerate  in  heaven.  One  of 
his  most  perfect  odes,  "  Delicise  Sapiential  de 
Amore,"  stands  for  ever  as  a  defence  and  vindi- 
cation. Boldly  it  calls  to  the  glad  Palace  of 
Virginity  those  "To  whom  generous  Love,  by 
any  name,  is  dear  " — who,  all  gropingly  and  un- 
wittingly, have  sought  and  yet  seek 

Nothing  but  God 
Or  mediate  or  direct. 

Father  Gerard  Hopkins,  upon  his  single  visit 
to  Hastings  in  1885,  was  shown  the  manuscript  of 
a  prose  work,  Sponsa  Dei,  designed  by  Patmore 
for  posthumous  publication,  and  containing  the 
fullest  expansion  of  these  transcendental  views. 
He  returned  it  with  one  grave  remark — "That's 
telling  secrets."  It  was  upon  the  "authority  of 
his  goodness,"  Patmore  always  declared,  that  this 
beautiful  treatise  became  fuel  for  another  historic 
burnt-offering  :  but  one  can  scarcely  doubt  that 
he  himself  had  come  to  recognise  the  delicate 
Tightness  of  the  priest's  judgment,  and  the  fact 
that  his  subject  demanded  the  parabolic  vesture 
of  poetry.  We  have  the  less  cause  to  mourn  over 
this  lost  manuscript,  since  most  of  its  matter 
appears  to  have  reached  us  through  the  pages  of 
Religio  Poetce.  "The  Precursor"  of  this  latter 


COVENTRY  PATMORE  119 

volume  is  probably  the  most  illuminating  criticism 
upon  natural  and  divine  love  which  Patmore  (or 
any  other  modern)  has  given  us.  It  is  the  essence 
of  his  poetic  philosophy,  thrown  out  with  virile 
sparks  of  mystical  insight. 

There  is  about  Coventry  Patmore's  work  a  su- 
preme, almost  an  infallible,  Tightness  of  spirit : 
but  not  infrequently  an  extravagance  and  perver- 
sity of  literal  expression.  Two  explanations  are 
at  hand — the  fact  that  much  of  his  writing  was 
''special  pleading,"  and  the  exalted,  autocratic 
nature  of  his  genius.  "My  call  is  that  I  have 
seen  the  truth,  and  can  speak  the  living  words 
which  come  of  having  seen  it,"  he  asserted  ;  and 
his  shafts  were  driven  home  with  the  instinct  of  a 
born  fighter.  Yet  there  can  be  no  question  of  the 
constructive  value  of  his  teaching,  of  the  over- 
whelming reality  with  which  it  reveals  the  doctrines 
of  the  Trinity,  the  Incarnation,  the  Real  Presence 
and  the  sacrament  of  Holy  Matrimony.  All  his 
life  he  was,  in  his  own  words,  trying  "To  dig 
again  the  wells  which  the  Philistines  had  filled  " 
— building  up  the  supernatural  upon  the  basis  of 
natural  good,  bowing  down  before  the  divine 
weakness  and  nearness  of  God  in  Christ,  rather 
than  before  His  primal  infinity.  It  is  all  symbol- 
ised in  that  cryptic  Tomb  at  Lymington :  the 
obelisk  of  Egypt  (Nature)  and  the  Lion  of  Judah, 
rising  upon  the  three  steps  of  the  Trinity ;  the 
Cross,  the  Host,  the  Virgin's  lilies  ;  and  for  a  text 
that  stupendous  promise,  My  covenant  shall  be  in 
your  flesh. 


LIONEL  JOHNSON 

THE  news  of  Lionel  Johnson's  early  and  tragic 
death  brought  to  friends  a  keen  sense  of  personal 
loss  and  to  the  literary  world  a  consciousness 
that  his  place  would  be  difficult  to  fill,  yet  could 
not,  save  with  serious  detriment,  be  left  empty. 
He  had  stood  for  something  definite  and  some- 
thing high.  As  poet,  he  had  clothed  conceptions 
of  delicate  and  poignant  loveliness  in  the  robe  of 
an  almost  classic  austerity.  As  critic,  he  had 
shown  himself  a  master  of  sure  judgment  and 
wide  sympathies ;  possessing,  in  his  own  words, 
"  preferences  but  no  prejudices" — if  one  except 
that  fundamental  prejudice  against  the  vulgar,  the 
perverse  or  the  insincere  in  art.  All  things  pure 
and  noble,  and  not  a  few  forgotten  or  despised, 
found  shelter  in  Lionel  Johnson's  heart:  and  then, 
that  heart  ceased  beating.  Even  now  it  is  difficult 
to  think  dispassionately  of  the  young  poet,  with 
his  childlike  face  and  his  words  of  memorable  wis- 
dom, of  reticent  yet  compelling  pathos.  Still  more 
difficult  is  it  to  reach  any  satisfying  analysis  of  the 
mingled  defeat  and  victory  which  made  up  his 
life's  brief  conflict.  His  aloofness,  to  the  very 
end,  was  majestic  as  well  as  melancholy. 

Strangely  enough,  it  is  in  the  vivid  yet  uncon- 
scious self-portraiture  of  his  final  poem,  the  lines 
to  Walter  Pater,  that  the  truest  comment  upon  his 
own  life  and  work  is  found  : 

Gracious  God  rest  him,  he  who  toiled  so  well 

Secrets  of  grace  to  tell 
Graciously  .... 

1 20 


LIONEL  JOHNSON  121 

Half  of  a  passionately  pensive  soul 

He  showed  us,  not  the  whole  : 
Who  loved  him  best,  they  best,  they  only,  knew 

The  deeps  they  might  not  view  ; 
That,  which  was  private  between  God  and  him  ; 

To  others,  justly  dim. 

At  Broadstairs,  Kent,  in  the  March  of  1867, 
Lionel  Johnson  was  born  into  a  family  of  Pro- 
testant faith  and  military  predilection  ;  a  family, 
indeed,  which  had  seen  much  service  and  owned 
to  Irish  affiliations.  Pei'iaps  it  was  the  old  Gaelic 
and  Cymric  strain  in  his  blood  which  kept  the  boy 
so  free  from  hostile  influences  and  planted  in  his 
heart  an  early  love  of  Nature  and  of  the  past,  a 
certain  mystic  kinship  with  the  Beautiful  Un- 
known. Then  it  was  his  great  good  fortune  to  be 
educated  at  Winchester,  where  were  passed  six 
years  of  deep  content  and  inspiration.  The 
memory  of  Arnold  was  still  redolent  there  ;  fur- 
ther back,  the  memories  of  Collins,  of  Otway,  of 
Sir  Thomas  Browne,  and  dreams  of  "  half  a  thou- 
sand years"  of  scholarship.  There  were  the 
natural  beauties,  too,  of  that  rich  and  rural 
England — Twyford  Down,  the  near-by  hills  and 
woodlands,  "  walks  and  streets  of  ancient  days," 
and  that  "fair,  fern-grown  Chauntry  of  the 
Lilies,"  white  beneath  the  moonbeams. 

Music  is  the  thought  of  thee, 
Fragrance  all  thy  memory, 

Lionel  later  wrote ;  and  there  is  scarcely  a  spire 
or  cranny  of  the  old  place  on  which  he  has  not 
dwelt  in  loving  veneration.  At  Winchester,  very 
largely,  his  character  was  formed  and  his  future 
taste  determined  ;  there  the  bent  toward  scholar- 
ship, toward  solitude  and  toward  Catholicity  be- 
came inalienable  parts  of  his  life. 


122  THE  POETS'  CHANTRY 

When  Johnson  passed  on  to  New  College, 
Oxford,  he  was  scarcely  the  usual  freshman. 
He  had  written  and  had  written  well ;  already  a 
curious  maturity  of  intellect  was  united  to  that 
curious  youthfulness  of  physique  which  endured 
even  to  the  end.  Several  of  his  published  poems 
date  as  far  back  as  1887,  1885,  even  1883,  albeit 
their  author  was  but  little  inclined  to  rest  upon  these 
tentative  laurels.  The  educational  process  seems 
to  have  been  in  the  nature  of  a  triumphal  march 
all  along  for  Lionel  Johnson,  and  the  poem 
"Oxford  Nights"  is  a  charming  commentary 
upon  his  early  love  of  the  classics — "dear  human 
books  "to  him,  and  nowise  formidable.  In  spite 
of  all  this,  he  very  nearly  missed  his  first  degree 
because  only  one  member  of  the  entire  examining 
board  could  decipher  his  handwriting  ! 

Shortly  after  attaining  his  majority,  Lionel 
Johnson  was  received  into  the  Catholic  Church. 
The  step  implied  no  sudden  change  of  faith,  for 
he  would  seem  to  have  been  Catholic  almost  from 
the  first  by  right  of  intuitive  yearning.  His  in- 
stinct was  all  for  legitimacy  and  orderly  develop- 
ment on  the  one  side — on  the  other,  all  for  the 
mystical  and  unworldly,  for  the"  human  fired  with 
a  touch  of  the  divine  :  and  it  is  this  very  inevit- 
ability which  imparts  such  grace  to  the  story. 
Here  was  the  return  of  a  son  into  the  arms  of  his 
Mother,  a  great  yet  simple  act ;  and,  beyond  a 
prayer  that  his  beloved  England  might  so  return 
to  allegiance,  Lionel  appeared  quite  unconscious 
that  the  matter  could  be  made  one  of  controversy. 
It  is  said  that  about  this  time  he  had  thoughts  of 
entering  the  priesthood.  In  his  "  Vigils"  (written 
at  Oxford  in  1887),  one  recognises  a  spiritual  con- 
centration very  like  that  of  the  young  Crashaw, 
lone  watcher  "  beneath  Tertullian's  roof  of 
angels": 


LIONEL  JOHNSON  123 

Song1  and  silence  ever  be 

All  the  grace  life  brings  to  me  : 

Song  of  Mary,  Mighty  Mother  ; 

Song  of  Whom  she  bore,  my  Brother  : 

Silence  of  an  ecstasy 

Where  I  find  Him,  and  none  other. 

Lionel  Johnson's  vocation  to  what  Faber  has  called 
"the  mystical  apostolate  of  the  inward  life  "  was, 
to  the  last,  unwavering  ;  but  with  characteristic 
self-criticism  he  deemed  himself  better  suited  to  a 
literary  than  to  a  priestly  career.  Thenceforth  he 
served  his  art  with  almost  cloistral  consecration, 
finding  in  the  long  and  painful  service  a  "blessed- 
ness beyond  the  pride  of  kings." 

The  first  publication  of  Johnson's  poems  seems 
to  have  been  in  1892,  when  a  selection  of  the 
earlier  ones  appeared  in  the  Book  of  the  Rhymers* 
Club.  The  beautiful  lines  "  By  the  Statue  of 
King  Charles  at  Charing  Cross "  were  included 
in  the  number,  and  attracted  some  attention  from 
the  poetically  hopeful.  That  same  year  he  com- 
pleted his  searching  and  admirable  prose  work  on 
The  Art  of  Thomas  Hardy.  The  publication  of 
this  volume  was  delayed  until  1894,  but  its  final 
appearance  was  the  signal  for  Lionel  Johnson's 
immediate  welcome.  The  name  of  the  youthful 
critic  (he  was  then  only  twenty-seven)  was  coupled 
with  those  of  Arnold  and  Pater,  and  his  words 
were  thenceforth  prized  by  the  foremost  literary 
journals  of  London. 

The  passing  of  another  year  added  new  laurels, 
for  in  1895  his  first  complete  volume  of  Poems  was 
issued.  The  power  of  verses  like  "The  Dark 
Angel  "  was  recognised  on  all  sides  ;  but  Johnson's 
intense  subjectivity,  his  preoccupation  with  spiri- 
tual ideas  and  ideals,  made  the  critics  somewhat 
guarded  in  their  praise.  Meanwhile,  with  serene 
indifference,  our  poet  was  preparing  a  new  volume, 


i24  THE  POETS'  CHANTRY 

to  appear  in  1897  under  the  title  Ireland,  with  Other 
Poems.  This  contained  some  of  his  most  exquisite 
work ;  religious  lyrics  that  soared  up  straight 
as  the  tapers  upon  an  altar,  songs  of  hapless 
Innisfail,  and  chastened  meditations  upon  life  and 
love.  And  it  proved,  beyond  all  doubt,  that  here 
was  a  poet  of  Other-world  fealties,  with  no  inten- 
tion of  conciliating  the  practical  English  public. 
With  heart-whole  sincerity  Johnson  followed  the 
gods  of  his  affection — and  for  the  most  part, 
they  were  neglected  divinities.  Yet  his  poet's 
insight  had  prophetic  clearness  ;  looking  backward 
now,  one  is  almost  amazed  at  the  number  of 
public  movements  which  shared  his  sympathy. 
There  was,  first  of  all,  the  Catholic  reaction  in 
England,  admittedly  one  of  the  great  phenomena 
of  nineteenth-century  thought ;  and  Lionel  John- 
son was  as  distinctively  its  product  as  the  West- 
minster Cathedral.  Again,  he  was  one  of  the 
first  to  give  ardent  support  to  that  Celtic  Renais- 
sance which  has  since  proved  itself  a  reality.  As 
an  early  member  of  the  Irish  Literary  Society,  he 
mourned  with  Douglas  Hyde  over  the  decline  of 
the  Gaelic  tongue  ;  while,  with  his  friend  William 
Butler  Yeats,  he  shared  hopes  for  the  future  of 
Irish  drama.  So,  too,  did  Johnson  raise  his 
protest  against  a  certain  decadent  literary  influence 
from  across  the  Channel,  and  against  various 
native  "  professors  of  strange  speech  "  and  stranger 
graces,  who  "suffer  under  the  delusion  that  they 
are  very  French." 

But  throughout  these  years  when  his  critical 
activity  brightened  the  pages  of  the  Academy, 
the  Daily  Chronicle  and  other  papers,  Johnson's 
health  was  perceptibly  failing.  His  body,  always 
frail,  grew  less  and  less  able  to  support  the  con- 
tinued mental  strain.  Even  those  long,  wondrous 
rambles  through  Wales  and  Cornwall,  which 


LIONEL  JOHNSON  125 

brought  the  poet  so  close  to  Nature's  meanings, 
were  powerless  to  wrest  the  secret  of  physical 
health.  Every  normal  stimulant  seemed  at  last 
ineffective ;  and  so  it  happened  that  the  sad, 
immemorial  story  was  repeated — the  story  of 
which  Edgar  Poe  furnished  an  even  more  tragic 
instance.  There  is  slight  call  to  dwe1!  ipon  the 
warfare  of  these  later  years,  or  to  ren  ;tnber  the 
darkness  which  for  a  time  eclipsed  the  star.  For 
full  twelve  months  before  his  death  Johnson  ap- 
pears to  have  published  nothing ;  from  his  nearest 
friends  he  became  a  recluse,  and  all  letters  and 
solicitations  were  met  by  silence.  But  scarcely 
anyone  realised  the  full  pathos  of  his  situation 
until,  on  22  September,  1902,  the  following  note 
came  to  the  editor  of  the  Academy. 

"You  last  wrote  to  me  some  time,  I  think,  in 
the  last  century,  and  I  hadn't  the  grace  to  answer. 
But  I  was  in  the  middle  of  a  serious  illness  which 
lasted  more  than  a  year,  during  the  whole  of  which 
time  I  was  not  in  the  open  for  even  five  minutes, 
and  hopelessly  crippled  in  hands  and  feet.  After 
that  long  spell  of  enforced  idleness  I  feel  greedy 
for  work." 

Accompanying  this  precious  evidence  of  the 
star's  enduring  and  prevailing  brightness  were 
the  lines  before  mentioned,  to  the  memory  of  his 
"unforgettably  most  gracious  friend,"  Walter 
Pater.  One  week  later — on  the  night  of  29  Sep- 
tember— he  left  his  lodgings  at  Clifford's  Inn  for  a 
solitary  walk.  He  never  returned.  Death,  by  some 
inscrutable  irony,  waited  tryst  with  this  high  and 
solitary  soul  in  all  the  vulgar  glare  of  a  way- 
side "public  house."  There  was  a  slight  fall 
(slight,  indeed,  for  any  other,  but  not  for  this 
tabernacle  of  wrought  ivory),  and  when  the  un- 
conscious form  was  raised,  the  skull  was  found 
hopelessly  fractured.  Mr.  Yeats  had  said  the 


126  THE  POETS'  CHANTRY 

word  :  it  was  all  part  of  the  old  world's  tragedy 
that 

So  many  pitchers  of  rough  clay 
Should  prosper  and  the  porcelain  break  in  two. 

So  Lionel  Johnson  was  carried  to  St.  Bartholo- 
mew's Hospital,  where  he  whom  the  world  had 
taught  weariness  slept  for  four  long  days  and 
nights.  Then,  early  in  the  morning  of  4  October, 
1902,  he  awakened  in  Eternity. 

Were  it  not  for  the  poems,  it  would  be  difficult 
to  connect  this  reticent,  fragile  struggler  with  life 
— always  a  pathetic  and  lovable  figure — with  the 
serenely  impersonal  man  of  letters  known  to 
London  journalism.  But  his  own  hand  has 
bridged  the  abyss  ;  through  his  poetical  work  may 
we  trace  the  author's  spiritual  pilgrimage  with  no 
great  incompleteness.  It  is  not  that  the  pages  are 
frequently  autobiographical — it  is  simply  that  both 
choice  of  theme  and  treatment  are  essentially 
characteristic.  Some  of  the  earliest  of  these 
poems  show  the  strong  influence  of  Classical  litera- 
ture :  "Sertorius"  is  one  instance,  and  "  Julian 
at  Eleusis,"  that  plaintive  elegy  upon  the  death  of 
pagan  worship,  is  another.  But  "The  Classics," 
with  its  brief  and  trenchant  appreciation  of  the 
Greek  and  Latin  writers,  is  the  most  complete 
expression  of  a  culture  which  very  largely  moulded 
Johnson's  own  literary  style.  Upon  every  page 
of  his  work  lies  this  stamp  of  scholarship ;  one 
recognises  it  in  the  exquisite,  unobtrusive  chiselling 
of  his  verse-effects,  but  even  more  fundamentally 
in  his  graceful  ordering  of  ideas  and  his  masterly 
control  of  passion  and  imagination.  Considering 
his  poetry  as  a  whole,  in  matter  rather  than  form, 
we  may  safely  define  the  mainsprings  of  inspira- 
tion as  Nature,  Celtic  Memories  and  Catholic  Faith. 
A  glorious  trio  it  was,  falling  into  subdivisions  of 


LIONEL  JOHNSON  127 

almost  equal  majesty :  exaltation  of  sky  and  sea 
and  earth,  musings  upon  the  immemorial  tragedy 
of  life  and  death,  chivalrous  loyalty  to  Ireland, 
deep  love  and  reverence  for  the  past,  for  pagan 
culture  and  mediaeval  mysticism,  with  wistful 
visions  of  eternity.  Even  in  poems  of  personal  or 
reminiscent  origin,  such  as  "Winchester"  or  the 
series  to  "  Malise,"  most  of  these  elements  are 
discoverable,  blended  into  a  harmony  which  is 
our  poet's  very  own — his  characteristic  message  to 
the  world. 

Because  of  the  universal  potency  of  external 
beauty,  it  may  be  that  Johnson's  widest  appeal 
will  be  made  through  his  Nature  poems.  "  Sancta 
Silvarum,"  written  as  early  as  1886,  expresses  in 
lines  of  powerful  cadence  the  youth's  passionate 
sympathy  with  the  Nature  world,  his  quick  response 
to  the 

music  of  the  mystery,  that  embraces 
All  forest-depths,  and  footless,  far-off  places, 

his  awed  recognition  of  one  mighty  Will  that 
shapes  the  course  of  star  and  blossom,  of  wind  and 
sea.  For  the  most  part  it  was  the  wilder  and  more 
desolate  aspect  that  he  loved  to  contemplate — 
Nature  upon  rain-driven  moors,  where  "the  wet 
earth  breathes  ancient  fair  fragrance  forth,"  rather 
than  in  "vineyard  and  orchard,  flowers  and  mel- 
low fruit." 

Great  good  it  is  to  see  how  beauty  thrives 

For  desolate  moorland  and  for  moorland  men  ; 

To  smell  scents  rarer  than  soft  honey  cells, 

From  bruised  wild  thyme,  pine  bark  or  mouldering  peat ; 

To  watch  the  crawling  grey  clouds  drift,  and  meet 

Midway  the  ragged  cliffs.     O  mountain  spells  ; 

Calling  us  forth,  by  hill,  and  moor,  and  glen  ! 

Such   is  the  exalting   burden    of   "Gwynedd"; 


i28  THE  POETS'  CHANTRY 

but  the  author  of  "  Gwynedd,"  be  it  remembered, 
had  never  known  the  lotus  land  of  Italy. 

The  blending  of  abstract  and  concrete  throughout 
these  poems  is  peculiarly  interesting :  Lionel 
Johnson's  ideal  beauty  is  not  invariably  wrapped 
in  cloud  or  dazzling  in  the  splendour  of  sunrise — 
it  is  both  sought  and  found  beneath  some  actual, 
earthly  symbol.  Hence  this  poet  was  increasingly 
given  to  the  painting  of  word  pictures,  little  vig- 
nettes of  an  almost  Cowper-like  nicety,  which 
crystallise  some  momentary  aspect  of  Nature  with 
the  soulful  simplicity  of  Wordsworth  himself. 
"  In  England  "  abounds  in  these  sketches,  as  of 


A  deep  wood,  where  the  air 
Hangs  in  a  stilly  trance, 


or  again  of : 

Wind  on  the  open  down, 
Riding  the  wind,  the  moon. 

A  thousand  intimate  recollections  of  Johnson's 
own  rambles  intensify  the  personal  note,  and  very 
charmingly  ;  he  sings  of  the  sea-gulls  wheeling  off 
in  "a  snowstorm  of  white  wings,"  and  of  the  shy 
rabbits  who  hopped  away  at  his  approach,  the 
sunlight  glowing  "red  their  startled  ears." 
Our  poet  once  wrote  that  while  he  could  but  ill 
understand  the  temptation  to  worship  the  sun,  he 
found  entirely  comprehensible  that  other  tempta- 
tion toward  worship  of  the  earth — "not  with  a 
vague,  pantheistic  emotion,  but  with  a  personal 
love  for  the  sensible  ground  beneath  his  feet."  It 
is  impossible  not  to  feel  this  tenderness,  this  sense 
of  omnipresent  kinship  throughout  his  Nature 
pictures;  in  his  love  of  the  "freshness  of  early 
spray,"  and  of  sky  and  field  and  moor.  The  reality 
of  it  all  reaches  final  expression  in  those  poignant 
lines  of  "Cadgwith"  : 


LIONEL  JOHNSON  129 

Ah,  how  the  City  of  our  God  is  fair ! 

If,  without  sea,  and  starless  though  it  be, 

For  joy  of  the  majestic  beauty  there, 

Men  shall  not  miss  the  stars,  nor  mourn  the  sea. 

There  has  been  a  general  acceptation  of  Johnson 
as  a  poet  of  the  Irish  revival  which  is  both  true 
and  false.  The  heart  has  its  own  fatherland  ;  and, 
while  as  fundamentally  English  in  many  ways  as 
Newman  himself,  Johnson  did  throw  in  his  lot 
unhesitatingly  with  the  fortunes  of  the  Celt.  It 
was  at  first,  no  doubt,  a  poetical  and  devotional 
attraction  (albeit  blood,  too,  called,  on  the  paternal 
side) ;  the  response  of  a  keenly  imaginative  nature 
to  the  half-revealed  magic  of  Celtic  lore — that 
magic  of  fire  and  of  tears.  Out  of  this  grew 
Lionel's  passion  for  Ireland  ;  albeit  the  glamour  of 
her  romance  and  her  mystery,  her  thirst  for  freedom 
and  her  unnumbered  woes,  eventually  won  from 
him  the  allegiance  of  a  very  son.  That  fine  and 
masterly  poem  which  forms  the  title  of  his  second 
volume  is  probably  the  richest  fruit  of  this  self-dedi- 
cation. From  the  elemental  pathos  of  "  Ireland's  " 
opening  stanzas,  through  the  bitter  story  of  wrong 
and  martyrdom,  and  the  cold,  terrible  arraignment 
of  the  land's  oppressors,  the  music  sweeps  with  the 
majesty  at  once  of  death  and  of  victory  : 

How  long?    Justice  of  Very  God  !     How  long? 
The  Isle  of  Sorrows  from  of  old  hath  trod 
The  stony  road  of  unremitting  wrong  : 
The  purple  winepress  of  the  wrath  of  God. 
Is  then  the  Isle  of  Destiny  indeed 

To  grief  predestinate  ; 
Ever  foredoomed  to  agonize  and  bleed, 
Beneath  the  scourging  of  eternal  fate  ? 
Yet  against  hope  shall  we  still  hope,  and  still 

Beseech  the  eternal  Will ; 
Our  lives  to  this  one  service  dedicate. 


i3o  THE  POETS'  CHANTRY 

And  at  last  comes  the  plaintive  tenderness  of 
that  call  to  Mary  : 

Glory  of  Angels  !     Pity,  and  turn  thy  face, 
Praying  thy  Son,  even  as  we  pray  thee  now, 
For  thy  dear  sake  to  set  thine  Ireland  free  : 

Pray  thou,  thy  little  Child  ! 
Ah  !  who  can  help  her,  but  in  mercy  He? 
Pray  then,  pray  thou  for  Ireland,  Mother  mild  ! 

There  are  numerous  shorter  poems  in  both 
volumes  treating  of  the  same  subject :  notably 
those  powerful  lines  "  To  Parnell,"  and  the  elegy 
beginning, 

God  rest  you,  rest  you,  rest  you,  Ireland's  dead. 

But  "for  a'  that  and  a'  that,"  Lionel  Johnson 
was  no  Celtic  poet.  One  critic  has  asserted  that 
in  him  the  Irish  revival  lost  "its  poet  of  firmest 
fibre  and  its  most  resonant  voice — the  only  voice 
in  which  there  was  the  cordial  of  a  great  courage." 
But  when  all  is  said,  it  was  a  voice  from  without. 
Perhaps  the  clearest  way  to  draw  this  distinction 
is  to  set  side  by  side  Johnson's  treatment  of  a 
Celtic  theme  with,  for  instance,  that  of  Mr.  Yeats. 
The  latter's  poem  on  the  "Death  of  Cuhoolin" 
ends  thus : 

In  three  days'  time,  Cuhoolin  with  a  moan 
Stood  up,  and  came  to  the  long  sands  alone  : 

For  four  days  warred  he  with  the  bitter  tide ; 
And  the  waves  flowed  above  him,  and  he  died. 

This  is  by  no  means  a  superlative  example  of  the 
Irish  poet's  work,  but  it  has  caught  something  of 
the  crude,  epic,  dream-like  simplicity  of  a  primi- 
tive saga.  Now  in  "Cyhiraeth,"  Johnson  has 
embodied  the  story  of  Llewellyn  of  Llanarmon 


LIONEL  JOHNSON  131 

and  the  strange  summons  that  came  to  him  from 
the  Ghostly  Gate.  In  lines  of  weird  beauty  he 
describes  the  "dolour  and  the  dirge"  which 
swept  upon  the  land  one  cold  midnight,  the 
"  bitterness  of  wounding  fire  which  pierced  the 
chieftain's  heart."  Then 

While  wailed  the  herald  cry 
Upright  he  sprang,  and  stood  to  die, 
So,  Lion  of  Llanarmon  ! 
Lion  soul  and  eagle  face 
Fought  with  death  a  splendid  space  ; 
Oh,  proud  be  thou,  Llanarmon  ! 
Not  man  with  man,  but  man  with  death 
Wrestled  :  thine  hoariest  minstrel  saith 
No  greater  deed,  Llanarmon  ! 

The  power  of  such  poetry  is  undeniable  :  but  is 
one  not  conscious  of  the  long  vista  of  time  and 
art  through  which  our  bard  looks  back  upon  his 
subject?  The  Celtic  inspiration  was  in  truth  a 
precious  and  powerful  factor  in  Lionel  Johnson's 
poetry  ;  one  is  not  so  certain  that  it  was  an  in- 
evitable or  an  inalienable  one. 

On  the  other  hand,  any  divorce  between  the 
poet  and  his  religious  lyrics  would  be  quite  in- 
conceivable. His  early  lines  to  u  Our  Lady  of 
the  Snows  "  are  one  of  the  most  beautiful  expres- 
sions of  the  contemplative  ideal  to  be  found  in 
English  poetry:  while  his  "  Visions "  of  Hell, 
Purgatory  and  Heaven  are  notable  alike  for  ex- 
treme delicacy  of  touch  and  extreme  power.  But 
it  was  reserved  for  the  second  volume  to  prove 
this  scholarly  young  convert  one  of  the  loveliest 
of  our  devotional  poets.  It  is  seldom  possible  to 
wander  far  among  the  lily-beds  of  English  sacred 
lyrics  without  meeting  traces  of  Crashaw,  the 
ever-fragrant ;  and  in  Lionel  Johnsont  he  affinity 
is  quite  manifest.  Indeed,  many  of  his  Catholic 


i32  THE  POETS'  CHANTRY 

poems  are  altogether  worthy  of  a  place  beside  the 
master's.  Such  is  that  hymn  of  exquisite  beauty, 
"  Our  Lady  of  the  May  "  : 

O  Flower  of  flowers,  our  Lady  of  the  May  ! 

Thou  gavest  us  the  World's  one  Light  of  Light  : 

Under  the  stars,  amid  the  snows,  He  lay  ; 

While  Angels,  through  the  Galilean  night, 

Sang  glory  and  sang  peace  ; 

Nor  doth  their  singing  cease, 

For   thou   their   Queen   and    He    their   King   sit 

crowned 

Above  the  stars,  above  the  bitter  snows  ; 
They  chaunt  to  thee  the  Lily,  Him  the  Rose, 
With  white  Saints  kneeling  round. 
Gone  is  cold  night :  thine  now  are  spring  and  day: 
O  Flower  of  flowers,  our  Lady  of  the  May  ! 

And  this  is  scarcely  more  beautiful  than  a  dozen 
others  which  follow  or  precede.  "  Te  Martyrum 
Candidatus  "  has  been  one  of  the  most  frequently 
quoted  ;  and  lines  like — 

These  through  the  darkness  of  death,  the  dominion 
of  night, 

Swept,  and  they  woke  in  white  places  at  morning 
tide: 

They  saw  with  their  eyes,  and  sang  for  joy  of  the 
sight, 

They  saw  with  their  eyes  the  Eyes  of  the  Cruci- 
fied, 

illustrate  how  admirably  its  metre  reproduces  the 
triumphant  onward  rush  of  those  White  Horse- 
men, the  "fair  chivalry  of  Christ."  All  this  is 
merely  a  further  instance  of  the  poet's  mastery 
over  technical  form  ;  this  time  in  a  department 
where,  perhaps  more  than  in  any  other  division  of 
verse,  purely  artistic  excellence  is  prone  to  be 
neglected.  Yet  every  reader  must  be  aware  that 


LIONEL  JOHNSON  133 

the  religious  sincerity  of  Johnson's  poems  did  not 
suffer  by  his  formal  precision.  What  could  be 
more  tender,  more  straightforward,  than  "  Sur- 
sum  Corda,"  lines  addressed  to  his  contemporary 
poet,  Francis  Thompson  ? 

Lift  up  your  hearts!     We  lift 

Them  up 
To  God,  and  to  God's  gift, 

The  Passion  Cup. 

Lift  up  yotir  hearts!     Ah,  so 

We  will : 
Through  storm  of  fire  or  snow, 

We  lift  them  still.  .   .  . 

But  as  an  expression  of  pure  spiritual  yearning, 
Lionel  Johnson  has  scarcely  left  us  a  gift  of  more 
haunting  beauty  than  the  short  poem,  "  De  Pro- 
fundis": 

Would  that  with  you  I  were  imparadised, 

White  Angels  around  Christ ! 
That,  by  the  borders  of  the  eternal  sea, 

Singing,  I  too  might  be. 


Where  reigns  the  Victor  Victim,  and  His  Eyes 

Control  eternities  ! 
Immortally  your  music  flows  in  sweet 

Stream  round  the  Wounded  Feet ; 
And  rises  to  the  Wounded  Hands  ;  and  then 

Springs  to  the  Home  of  Men, 
The  Wounded  Heart :  and  there  in  flooding  praise 

Circles,  and  sings,  and  stays. 

So  far,  we  recognize  the  spiritual  exaltation,  the 
lyric  loveliness  of  Crashaw  and  the  older  Catholic 
hymnists.  But  listen  : 


134  THE  POETS'  CHANTRY 

My  broken  music  wanders  in  the  night, 

Faints,  and  finds  no  delight : 
White  Angels  take  of  it  one  piteous  tone, 

And  mix  it  with  your  own  ! 
Then,  as  He  feels  your  chanting  flow  less  clear, 

He  will  but  say  :  I  Tiear 
The  sorrow  of  My  child  on  earth. 

There  we  catch  the  voice  of  our  own  Lionel  John- 
son, the  poet  of  austere  ideals,  bruised  and  fore- 
spent  by  the  battle ;  the  poet  of  faith  through  an 
age  incredulous.  Bravely  he  faced  the  conflict, 
but  no  longer  joyously  :  the  maladie  du  siecle  had 
touched  him. 

In  approaching  his  more  personal  poems,  we 
shall  have  to  face  the  most  serious  charge  ever 
brought  against  Johnson's  poetry — the  charge  that 
it  is  lacking  in  true  emotional  quality.  We  are 
told  that  his  lyrics  spring  from  and  express  a 
thought  rather  than  a  feeling  ;  and  to  admit  this 
unreservedly  is  to  imply  that  Johnson  should  have 
confined  himself  to  prose.  But  can  one  admit  it? 
The  plaintive,  eerie  melody  of  "  Morfydd  "  goes 
sighing  through  the  mind  : 

A  voice  on  the  winds, 
A  voice  by  the  waters, 

Wonders  and  cries  : 
Oh  !  -what  are  the  winds 
And  what  are  the  waters? 
Mine  are  your  eyes  / 

One  remembers,  too,  the  splendid  climax  of  those 
later  lines,  "To  Morfydd  Dead"— 

Take  from  me  the  light, 

God  !  of  all  thy  suns  : 
Give  me  her,  who  on  the  winds 
Wanders  lone ! 


LIONEL  JOHNSON  135 

and  they  do  not  seem  to  speak  of  frigid  formalism. 
Neither  do  the  odes  to  "Winchester,"  nor  the 
wonderfully  tender  poems  on  friendship  to  be 
found  in  both  volumes.  The  truth  of  the  charge 
is  probably  this  :  all  the  world  loves  a  lover  (at 
least,  theoretically),  and  Lionel  Johnson  did  not 
show  the  usual  predilection  toward  interpreting 
this  master  passion.  His  love  poems  are  few  in 
number.  But  if  any  reader  be  tempted  to  doubt 
this  poet's  capacity  for  the  very  white  heat  of 
emotion,  we  would  commend  to  his  perusal 
"The  Destroyer  of  a  Soul,"  or  those  passionately 
beautiful  lines,  "  A  Proselyte"  : 

Heart  of  magnificent  desire  : 
O  equal  of  the  lordly  sun  ! 
Since  thou  hast  cast  on  me  thy  fire, 
My  cloistral  peace,  so  hardly  won, 

Breaks  from  its  trance  : 

One  glance 
From  thee  hath  all  its  joy  undone  ! 

Deeper  still  may  we  pierce  to  the  heart-pleading 
of  that  early  and  tragic  poem  "  Darkness" — even 
to  the  vehement  self-revelation  of  "The  Dark 
Angel,"  and  its  companion-piece,  "  To  Passions  "  : 

That  hate,  and  that,  and  that  again 
Easy  and  simple  are  to  bear  : 
My  hatred  of  myself  is  pain 
Beyond  my  tolerable  share. 

Such  lines  are  more  convincing  to  some  of  us 
than  the  melodramatic  outpourings  of  a  Byron. 
As  for  "The  Dark  Angel" — perhaps  the  most 
famous  of  all  Lionel  Johnson's  work — that  is 
a  poem  of  quintessential  power,  a  very  flash-light 
upon  the  bitter  and  eternal  conflict  which  had  its 
rise  in  Eden  : 


136  THE  POETS'  CHANTRY 

Dark  Angel,  with  thine  aching  lust 
To  rid  the  world  of  penitence  : 
Malicious  Angel,  who  still  dost 
My  soul  such  subtle  violence  ! 
Because  of  thee,  no  thought,  no  thing 
Abides  for  me  undesecrate  : 
Dark  Angel,  ever  on  the  wing, 
Who  never  readiest  me  too  late  ! 

There  is  something  well-nigh  intolerable  in 
the  verisimilitude  of  the  poem,  in  its  frightful 
arraignment  of  this  "venomous  spirit"  who 
broods  over  the  world  of  Nature  and  art,  tor- 
menting the  land  of  dreams,  blackening  the  face 
of  spring  and  youth  and  life  itself.  The  lines 
would  be  almost  sinister  were  it  not  for  the 
splendid  courage  of  those  final  stanzas : — 

I  fight  thee  in  the  Holy  Name  ! 
Yet,  what  thou  dost  is  what  God  saith  : 
Tempter  !  should  I  escape  thy  flame, 
Thou  wilt  have  helped  my  soul  from  Death. 


Do  what  thou  wilt,  thou  shalt  not  so, 
Dark  Angel !  triumph  over  me  : 
Lonely ',  unto  the  Lone  I  go  ; 
Divine^  to  the  Divinity. 

The  man  who  wrote  those  lines  felt,  indeed  ;  but 
upon  his  lips  lay  the  seal  of  culture  and  of  tem- 
peramental repression.  This  was  the  veil  of  his 
heart's  inner  sanctuary — that  ' '  Precept  of  Silence " 
which  one  of  his  most  characteristic  poems  has 
immortalised  : 

I  know  you  !     Solitary  griefs, 
Desolate  passions,  aching  hours  ! 
I  know  you  :  tremulous  beliefs, 
Agonised  hopes,  and  ashen  flowers  ! 


LIONEL  JOHNSON 137 

Some  players  upon  plaintive  strings 
Publish  their  wistfulness  abroad  : 
I  have  not  spoken  of  these  things, 
Save  to  one  man,  and  unto  God. 

By  no  means  insignificant  is  the  "criticism  of 
life"  throughout  this  poetry.  Lionel  Johnson  was 
one  of  a  little  band  who  through  all  the  turmoil 
of  late  nineteenth-century  thought — through  the 
storms  of  rationalism  and  materialism  and  so- 
called  realism — kept  their  faces  steadfastly  toward 
the  East.  Truth  and  Beauty  shone  as  twin  stars 
before  his  quiet  gaze  ;  it  was  his  supreme  achieve- 
ment to  create  works  of  art  which  "suffice  the 
eye  and  save  the  soul  beside."  His  message, 
all  along,  was  one  of  reconciliation.  He  con- 
trived to  be  at  once  the  apostle  of  culture  and 
of  devotion,  of  art  and  of  nature,  of  modernity 
and  of  the  ancient.  His  love  for  Catholicity  and 
for  Ireland  nowise  lessened  his  joy  in  England  ; 
nor  did  his  exultation  in  the  forest  wilds  dull  his 
ears  to  the  call  of  London's  thoroughfares.  One 
marvels,  seeing  the  gracious  harmony  of  his  pages, 
where  the  imagined  hostility  could  have  lain. 
Now,  of  course,  one  cause  of  this  comprehensive 
view  was  the  aloofness  of  his  attitude.  His  sensi- 
tiveness was  very  exquisite,  his  sympathy  with 
human  experience  was  very  keen  ;  but  he  stood 
a  little  apart  from  life.  His  was  the  attitude  of 
philosopher  and  contemplative  ;  although  never 
that  of  the  mere  academician.  Perhaps  his  own 
interior  struggle  served  to  obviate  a  natural 
tendency  toward  exclusive/less,  and  to  unite  the 
poet  with  his  great  labouring  and  suffering 
brotherhood.  It  is  never  easy  for  a  temperament 
like  Johnson's  to  overcome  its  intolerance  for 
many  aspects  of  human  nature.  It  is  never  easy 
to  recognise  that  the  spirit  is  willing  and  the  flesh 


138  THE  POETS'  CHANTRY 

weak,  without  despising  the  flesh.  But  if  there 
be  one  line  of  development  perceptible  through- 
out our  poet's  work,  it  is  an  increasing  tendency 
toward  the  human  and  concrete.  It  is  a  long, 
long  cry  from  the  "  proud  and  lonely  scorn  "  of 
temptation  that  goes  singing  through  his  youth- 
ful "  Ideal,"  to  the  humbled  yet  resolute  wrestling 
of  his  "  Dark  Angel."  For  the  rest,  we  shall  have 
to  admit  that  Lionel  Johnson's  song  was  for  the 
few  rather  than  the  many — that  the  nun-like 
delicacy  and  austerity  of  his  muse  made  any 
popular  recognition  quite  improbable. 

As  critic,  Johnson  has  met  with  a  more  liberal 
appreciation.  The  Art  of  Thomas  Hardy  >  upon 
which  that  reputation  rests  mainly,  is  universally 
recognised  as  one  of  the  sanest  and  most  scholarly 
pieces  of  work  called  forth  by  recent  fiction.  The 
subject  of  this  first  volume  testifies  very  clearly 
to  its  author's  singular  openness  of  mind:  "I 
remember,"  he  says,  "but  few  of  Mr.  Hardy's 
general  sentiments,  about  the  meaning  of  the 
unconscious  universe,  or  of  conscious  mankind, 
with  which  I  do  not  disagree  .  .  .  his  tone  of 
thought  neither  charms  nor  compels  me  to  acqui- 
esce ;  but  it  is  because  I  am  thus  averse  from  the 
attitude  of  a  disciple,  that  I  admire  Mr.  Hardy's 
art  so  confidently."  Here,  in  truth,  is  the  per- 
fect critical  temper — leading  the  artist  to  whom 
spiritual  laws  were  the  prime  realities  to  lay  his 
tribute  at  the  shrine  of  another  artist,  of  another 
philosophy.  But  in  Hardy,  Lionel  Johnson 
recognised  the  essential  humanist,  the  legitimate 
descendant  of  a  noble  line  of  English  novelists,  a 
master  of  constructive  art,  and  a  truthful  portrayer 
of  Wessex  life  and  thought. 

11  He  dwells,  in  a  dramatic  meditation,  upon  the 
earth's  antiquity,  the  thought  of  4  the  world's  grey 
fathers,'  and,  in  particular,  upon  certain  tracts 


LIONEL  JOHNSON 139 

of  land,  with  which  he  has  an  intimacy  .  .  .  old 
names,  and  old  houses  lingering  in  decay  .  .  . 
pagan  impulses,  the  spirit  of  material  and  natural 
religion,  the  wisdom  and  the  simplicity,  the  blind 
and  groping  thoughts  of  a  living  peasantry  still 
primitive.  .  .  .  He  loves  to  contemplate  the 
entrance  of  new  social  ways  and  forms,  into  a 
world  of  old  social  preference  and  tradition  ;  to 
show  how  there  is  waged,  all  the  land  over,  a 
conflict  between  street  and  field,  factory  and  farm, 
or  between  the  instincts  of  blood  and  the  capacities 
of  brain  ;  to  note  how  a  little  leaven  of  fresh  learn- 
ing may  work  havoc  among  the  weighty  mass 
of  ancient,  customary  thought  ...  to  build  up, 
touch  by  touch,  stroke  upon  stroke,  the  tragedy 
of  such  collision,  the  comedy  of  such  contrast, 
the  gentle  humour  or  the  heartless  satire  of  it  all, 
watched  and  recorded  by  an  observant  genius." 

Such  passages,  as  sonorous  as  they  are  sym- 
pathetic, bring  all  of  us  to  the  deeper  understand- 
ing of  Hardy's  work.  But  the  book  is  even 
broader  in  scope,  tracing  the  history  of  the 
English  novel  from  the  time  of  Defoe,  and 
characterising  with  rare  insight  its  different 
developments.  "The  modern  novel,"  observes 
Johnson,  "  differs  from  its  predecessors  mainly 
in  this :  that  it  is  concerned,  not  with  the  storm 
and  stress  of  great,  clear  passions  and  emotions, 
but  with  the  complication  of  them  :  there  is  a 
sense  of  entanglement.  .  .  .  Psychology,  to  use 
that  ambitious  term,  supplies  the  novelist  with 
studies  and  materials ;  not  only  the  free  and 
open  aspect  of  life  itself."  A  sense  of  entangle- 
ment! Could  any  other  one  phrase  so  aptly  have 
summed  up  the  strength  and  weakness  of  latter- 
day  fiction,  from  George  Meredith  or  George 
Eliot  to  Henry  James? 

It  was  characteristic  of  Lionel  Johnson  that  his 


i4Q  THE  POETS'  CHANTRY 

appeal  should  have  been  ever  to  the  past.  "  That 
inestimable  debt  of  reverence,  of  fidelity,  of  under- 
standing "  which  modern  scholarship  owes  anti- 
quity— less  a  debt,  after  all,  than  "a  grace  sought 
and  received  " — was  never  far  from  his  conscious- 
ness. Classicist  he  always  was,  from  those  days  at 
old  Winchester;  "  purist  and  precisian"  in  style, 
with  slight  interest  in  spelling-reform  or  other 
utilitarian  devices.  Inevitably  then,  past  great- 
ness, the  best  that  had  been  known  and  thought, 
became  for  him,  as  for  Arnold,  the  touchstone  by 
which  to  try  all  present  achievement,  "  About  con- 
temporary voices  there  is  an  element  of  uncertainty 
not  undelightful,  but  forbidding  the  perfection  of 
faith."  Johnson  wrote  in  one  of  his  sage  little 
articles  in  the  Academy:  "We  prophesy  and 
wait."  Yet,  although  the  personal  equation  in- 
clined thus  to  the  "serene  classics,"  the  critic's 
attitude  toward  a  living  genius  was  one  of  wistful 
appreciation.  His  every  sense  was  keen  in  the 
search  for  beauty,  and  he  welcomed  it  in  whatever 
guise  :  Lucretius  and  Fielding,  Pope  and  Words- 
worth, Renan  and  Hawthorne — all  of  these  shared 
his  sympathy  and  his  comprehension. 

The  discerning  had  great  hopes  of  Johnson, 
with  his  Celtic  dreams,  his  scholarly  and  exquisite 
methods,  his  unwavering  faith  in  spiritual  realities. 
And  they  were  never  fully  realised.  Without  pain 
— at  least,  without  protest — he  passed  on  to  the 
mansion  prepared  from  eternity  for  these  "  inheri- 
tors of  unfulfilled  renown."  Of  that  supreme  work 
which  he  had  contemplated,  a  beautiful,  final,  recon- 
ciling study  of  Catholic  art  and  Catholic  life,  a 
philosophy  merging  ethics  and  aesthetics  into  one 
harmonious  whole,  no  word  whatever  remains.  But 
is  there  not  a  danger  of  carrying  this  regret  too  far 
— of  urging  the  artist's  possibilities  at  the  expense 
of  his  actual  achievement?  The  work  Johnson  has 


LIONEL  JOHNSON 141 

left  is  superlatively  excellent  :  it  needs  neither 
apology  nor  explanation  ;  it  simply  needs  to  be 
read.  That,  indeed,  is  the  prime  difficulty  ;  for 
the  world  is  busy  about  many  things,  and  Lionel 
Johnson  spoke  with  so  gentle  a  sweetness,  so 
modest  a  serenity.  In  prose  and  verse  alike,  he 
was  stranger  to  the  jealousies  and  impatiences  of 
mere  ambition.  Securus  judicat  orbis  £errarum,he 
was  fond  of  quoting — "sure  and  sound  is  the 
whole  world's  judgment "  ;  and  to  Time,  that 
judge  so  deliberate  and  so  infallible,  he  committed 
all.  It  is  pleasant  and  reassuring  to  remember 
Lowell's  words  concerning  the  two  kinds  of 
literary  genius.  "  The  first  and  highest,"  he  tells 
us,  "may  be  said  to  speak  out  of  the  eternal  to 
the  present,  and  must  compel  its  age  to  under- 
stand it;  the  second  understands  its  age,  and  tells 
it  what  it  wishes  to  be  told." 

Lionel  Johnson,  quite  obviously,  was  not  of  this 
latter  type ;  but  one  has  strong  hope  that  his  place 
is  with  the  higher  company. 


FRANCIS    THOMPSON 

Designer  infinite ! 

Ah  !  must  Thou  char  the  wood  ere  Thou  canst  limn 
with  it  ? 


Whether  man's  heart  or  life  it  be  which  yields 
Thee  harvest,  must  Thy  harvest  fields 
Be  dunged  with  rotten  death  ? 

WORDS  of  terrible  import  these — and  of  a  truth 
before  which  one  veils  the  unwilling  eyes  :  the 
words  of  a  poet  whose  heart  had  already  endured 
the  charring  of  God's  insatiate  flame  ;  who,  in 
death,  was  yet  to  look  down  upon  the  whitening 
harvest  of  his  art. 

For  the  world  knew  not  Francis  Thompson  dur- 
ing the  days  of  his  pilgrimage.  Only  a  little  band 
— the  poets,  the  elect,  and  sundry  of  those  whose 
eyes  had  by  miracle  been  opened — knew  him. 
They,  after  all,  were  the  only  ones  whose  praise 
could  have  signified  to  the  man  himself.  But  after 
he  had  gone  out  from  among  us  the  world  wakened 
up.  The  world  had,  indeed,  almost  immediately 
the  grace  to  realise  how  costly  a  loss  had  befallen 
it.  The  world  mourned  the  poet.  The  world 
began  to  read  his  thrice-precious  legacy.  And  so 
the  world  grew  rich.  Then  came  that  memorable, 
that  almost  spectacular,  posthumous  essay  on 
Shelley,  as  rich  and  as  radiant  as  a  handful  of 
jewels  ;  and  even  the  general  reader  capitulated. 
So  that  to-day  one  may  quite  declare  Thompson's 
immortality  to  have  been  speedily  achieved  ;  for 
only  the  dead  are  immortal. 

142 


FRANCIS  THOMPSON  143 

When  a  certain  slender  volume  of  Poems,  by 
one  Francis  Thompson,  was  issued  in  the  Novem- 
ber of  1893,  critical  London  opened  wide  eyes  of 
attention  and  even  astonishment.  It  was  not,  of 
course,  the  mere  fact  of  a  new  luminary  upon  the 
poetic  horizon — too  frequent  an  occurrence  to 
cause  much  excitement,  and  prone,  alas,  to  prove 
but  the  giddy  flight  of  a  star  shooting  down  to 
oblivion.  But  in  these  pages  there  was  mani- 
festly something  unusual — something  elemental 
and  arresting.  Their  author  was  straightway 
greeted  with  the  dubious  distinction  of  new  poet, 
and  every  variety  of  criticism  was  showered  upon 
his  work.  The  old,  old  cry  of  "  native  woodnotes 
wild  "  came  from  one  reviewer,  from  another  the 
complaint  of  too  much  polishing  ;  his  diction  was 
decried  as  illiterate  on  one  side  and  as  "too  liter- 
ate "  on  the  other.  As  a  whole,  however,  the 
verdict  was  one  of  rather  dazed  appreciation  ;  and, 
if  personal  details  of  a  more  or  less  romantic  nature 
began  to  mingle  with  current  criticism,  they  merely, 
and  for  a  time,  added  to  the  poet's  little  vogue. 

But  who  was  the  poet?  In  one  sense  a  young 
man — some  thirty-four  years — as  ages  go:  but 
bowed  already,  bent,  well-nigh  broken  by  the  age- 
old  sorrow  of  the  world.  Not  unmeet  was  it  that 
Thompson's  birth  should  have  been  in  Lanca- 
shire, historic  home  of  the  flame-red,  blood-red 
rose.  His  father  and  mother  were  converts  to  the 
Faith.  He  was  early  sent  to  the  venerable  Ushaw 
school,  in  half-anticipation  of  a  priestly  career. 
Later  came  the  tragic  choice  of  medicine  (his 
family's  choice,  for  the  father  was  a  physician) 
and  the  passing  on  to  Owens  College,  Manchester. 
But  Francis  loved  the  public  libraries  too  well  to 
keep  to  his  Materia  Medica ;  and  he  would  seem 
to  have  lacked  courage  to  tell  his  father  how 
radically,  how  painfully,  how  even  ludicrously 


144  THE  POETS'  CHANTRY 

impossible  the  chosen  vocation  must  be.  So  the 
breach  came,  the  needless  yet  inevitable  breach ; 
only  healed  by  sufferance  under  the  Franciscan 
shadow  of  Pantasaph,  a  few  months  before  the 
parent's  death.  "  I  was  in  every  sense  an  unsatis- 
factory son,"  the  poet  declared  with  sad  humility 
in  his  later  life. 

Up  to  London  came  the  young  exile,  unfriended, 
with  a  body  never  robust,  a  heart  of  aching  sensi- 
tiveness, and  a  mind  absorbed  in  dreams  of  ideal 
beauty.  Nothing  was  ever  so  inconsolably  easy 
as  his  steep,  his  swift  descent.  Those  days  upon 
the  cruel  London  streets ;  those  nights  when  he 
lay  outcast,  suffering  the  "abashless  inquisition 
of  each  star";  the  wonderful,  tentative  efforts; 
the  ceaseless  literary  discouragements  ;  the  want, 
the  shame,  the  impotence  of  it  all,  bore  their 
speedy  fruit.  Master  of  the  drug  this  poet  early 
scorned  to  be  :  but  now,  in  his  misery,  the  servi- 
tude to  the  drug  was  his.  There,  at  least,  lay  the 
cessation  of  pain.  It  sounds  almost  melodramatic, 
the  sequel  to  this  terrible  prologue :  yet  it  comes 
to  us  upon  Thompson's  own  word  that  only  the 
hand  of  Thomas  Chatterton — reaching  out  to  him 
from  the  twilight  world  of  poetry  and  of  death — 
stayed  his  own  hand  in  what  might  have  been  the 
hour  of  despair.  That  was  the  night  of  ultimate 
darkness.  But  the  angels  kept  watch  and  slept 
not  until  morning  broke.  And  with  morning  came 
the  dawn  of  a  new  life  for  Francis  Thompson. 

The  honour  of  "discovering"  the  poet  rests 
primarily  with  the  editor  of  Merry  England 
through  whose  insight  the  worth  of  his  vagrant 
scraps  of  manuscript  was  recognized,  through 
whose  tender,  indefatigable  patience  he  was 
tracked  and  coerced  into  salvation.  To  him — 
as,  in  a  double  sense,  to  his  wife,  Alice  Meynell — 
fell  due  the  debt  of  Thompson's  immortal  grati- 


FRANCIS  THOMPSON  145 

tude :  and  to  these  "dear  givers"  was  dedicated 
the  first  volume  of  his  poems.  Some  of  these 
had  been  written  in  Sussex,  at  the  Premonstraten- 
sian  Monastery  of  Storrington,  to  which  the  new- 
found friends  had  directed  him.  And  here,  during 
the  following  months,  was  passed  an  interval  of 
ardently  serene  creativeness.  Here  and  in  London 
"The  Hound  of  Heaven"  took  final  form — that 
tremendous  and  triumphant  ode  which  silenced 
the  most  adverse  batteries  of  criticism,  and  which 
to  the  last  must  stand  as  one  of  Thompson's  very 
greatest  achievements.  Here  flamed  into  life  "The 
Setting  Sun."  Most  of  his  poems  upon  children 
were  subsequently  composed,  and  "Love  in 
Dian's  Lap"  took  on  its  chastely  perfect  vesture,  in 
London.  There  too  were  written  the  Sister  Songs, 
published  as  a  second  volume  in  1895;  and  Panta- 
saph,  near  Holywell,  in  Wales,  itself  the  seat  of  a 
Capuchin  Monastery,  was  the  birthplace  of  most 
of  the  New  Poems  which  appeared  in  1897. 
Accentuation,  all  along,  might  be  declared  the 
keynote  of  this  last  volume,  for  every  characteristic 
of  the  earlier  work  we  here  find  deepened.  It  is 
' ".  once  more  searchingly  philosophical  and  more 
richly  imaginative  ;  its  tenderness  is  more  impas- 
sioned, its  pathos  more  intense  ;  while  a  certain 
marvellous  verbal  jugglery  (that  purple  cloud  of 
chaotic  magnificence  which  so  often  wrapped,  and 
sometimes  obscured,  Francis  Thompson's  thought) 
is  even  more  inalienably  dominant  in  them. 

Then  the  poet  returned  to  London  ;  there  he 
lived,  for  the  greater  number  of  his  remaining 
years,  in  intimate  union  with  one  family  of  friends, 
but  latterly  he  wrote  little  poetry.  A  few  tren- 
chant prose  reviews  came  from  his  hand  during 
the  final  decade.  Then  also  was  written  that 
admirable  and  unique  Life  of  St.  Ignatius.  But 
not  the  wisest  and  the  dearest  of  our  poet's 


146  THE  POETS'  CHANTRY 

friends  could  recapture  the  splendid  victory  of 
that  early  renaissance,  nor  win  back  health  to  his 
own  poor  life. 

It  was  on  the  i3th  of  November,  1907,  that 
Francis  Thompson  died  :  shortly  after  a  visit  once 
again  to  his  peaceful  Sussex,  at  the  home  of  Mr. 
Wilfrid  Blunt.  He  died  in  the  London  to  which, 
rather  than  to  the  country,  he  seemed  to  belong, 
and  just  as  dawn  was  breaking  in  the  east.  He 
left  behind  him  a  number  of  unpublished  poems, 
alike  early  and  late,  to  be  gathered  by  his  literary 
executor  in  the  collected  edition  of  his  work. 

Well  —  one  may  see  Thompson's  achievement 
as  a  whole  now,  and  through  a  perspective  of 
time  which,  naturally,  changes  some  details  of 
the  outlook.  What  does  not  change  or  anywise 
diminish  is  the  conviction  of  his  high  place  as 
poet.  His  work  is  passionately  personal  ;  for  all 
the  debt  to  Patmorean  philosophy,  its  form  and 
its  thought  are  overwhelmingly  his  own.  But  it 
has  added  many  a  "  heart-remembered  "  line  to 
the  legitimate  heritage  of  English  literature. 
This  subjective  colouring,  as  omnipresent  in  the 
lyric  of  childhood  as  in  the  Nature  ode,  is  no- 
where more  emphatic  than  throughout  the  "  Love 
in  Dian's  Lap,"  addressed  to  Mrs.  Meynell. 
Nor,  indeed,  is  there  any  division  of  Thompson's 
poetic  work  more  uniquely  exquisite.  These  poems 
are,  for  the  most  part,  a  record  of  one  of  those 
high  and  beautiful  friendships  which  literature  has 
again  and  again  immortalised  for  us. 

At  the  rich  odours  from  her  heart  that  rise, 
My  soul  remembers  its  lost  Paradise, 


I  grow  essential  all,  uncloaking  me 

From  this  encumbering  virility, 

And  feel  the  primal  sex  of  heaven  and  poetry, 


FRANCIS  THOMPSON 147 

the  poet  declares,  in  one  of  that  series  which  Pat- 
more  has  said  "  St.  John  of  the  Cross  might  have 
addressed  to  St.  Theresa."  In  all  truth,  one  must 
search  Jerusalem  with  many  a  candle  before 
coming  upon  anything  more  ethereally  yet  poign- 
antly beautiful  in  its  own  field  than  "Her  Por- 
trait" or  "  Manus  Animam  Pinxit."  They  are 
not  in  any  sense  the  usual  style  of  erotic  poetry, 
these  poems  which  see  the  body  but  as  veil  and 
vesture  of  the  spirit  within,  and  which  make 
their  most  piercing  cry  : 

Oh  be  true 
To  your  soul,  dearest,  as  my  life  to  you ! 

But,  even  aside  from  their  poetic  excellence,  there 
is  that  in  them  for  which  Francis  Thompson  has 
taken  all  true  womanhood  into  his  debt  ;  as  did 
long  ago  that  brave  Cavalier  lyrist  who  laid  his 
tribute  at  the  feet  of  "  Lucasta." 

Through  the  love  poems  of  the  later  and  final 
volume  there  vibrates  a  new  note  of  passionate 
pain,  and  the  pathos  of  the  series  entitled 
"  Ultima"  is  scarcely  exceeded,  save  by  its  dig- 
nity. "No  man  ever  attained  supreme  know- 
ledge unless  his  heart  had  been  torn  up  by  the 
roots  "  :  these  are  the  words  chosen  by  Thomp- 
son as  text  for  his  "  Holocaust."  And  verily 
hand  in  hand  the  joy  and  the  pain  of  love  are 
seen  treading  the  winepress  of  the  succeeding 
lyrics,  until  the  vintage  of  "  Ultimum "  is 
reached  : 

Now  in  these  last  spent  drops,  slow,  slower  shed, 
Love  dies,  Love  dies,  Love  dies — ah,  Love  is  dead  ! 


The  days  draw  on  too  dark  for  Song  or  Love  : 
O  peace,  my  songs,  nor  stir  ye  any  wing  ! 
For  lo,  the  thunder  hushing  all  the  grove, 

•• 


148  THE  POETS'  CHANTRY 

And  did  Love  live,  not  even  Love  could  sing. 
And  Lady,  thus  I  dare  to  say, 
Not  all  with  you  is  passed  away  ! 

Beyond  your  star,  still,  still  the  stars  are  bright ; 
Beyond  your  highness,  still  I  follow  height ; 
Sole  I  go  forth,  yet  still  to  my  sad  view, 
Beyond  your  trueness,  Lady,  Truth  stands  true. 

In  different  vein,  but  full  of  charm  and  of  a 
gracious  seeming-ingenuousness,  is  the  "little 
dramatic  sequence "  which  our  poet  has  com- 
prehended under  the  title  "A  Narrow  Vessel." 
There  is  magic  in  his  "  Love  Declared,"  that 
moment  singled  out,  set  apart  in  the  heart's  long 
consciousness,  when 

the  winds 
Caught  up  their  breathing,  and  the  world's  great 

pulse 

Stayed  in  mid-throb,  and  the  wild  train  of  life 
Reeled  by,  and  left  us  stranded  on  a  hush. 

It  is  all  so  naively  intimate  that  almost  as  a  shock 
comes  the  Patmorean  revelation  of  the  Epilogue, 
wherein  it  appears  that  this  very,  very  human 
story  is  but  an  allegory  of  something  more  divine, 
since 

She,  that  but  giving  part,  not  whole, 
Took  even  the  part  back,  is  the  Soul. 

"The  human  heart,"  declared  Walter  Savage 
Landor,  "  is  the  world  of  poetry  ;  the  imagination 
is  only  its  atmosphere."  Never  a  poet  under- 
stood this  better  than  Thompson.  While  re- 
moved by  the  length  of  the  cosmos  from  the 
mists  of  pantheism  (in  which,  by  inevitable  para- 
dox, personality  tends  ever  to  become  imper- 
sonal !)  Thompson  beheld  in  Nature  a  wondrously 
vital  and  sentient  thing.  Beyond  this,  he  had  the 


FRANCIS  THOMPSON  149 

rarer  quality  of  the  unified  vision.  He  has  him- 
self elsewhere  proclaimed  the  symbolic  initiation 
without  which  no  poet  may  attain  his  mystic 
"land  of  Luthany";  declaring  the  final  seal  of 
this  vocation  to  be  that  inner,  indubitable  light 
by  which  he  perceives  that  all  created  things, 

Near  or  far, 

Hiddenly 

To  each  other  linked  are, 

And  thou  canst  not  stir  a  flower 

Without  troubling1  of  a  star. 

This  mingling  of  the  dainty  and  the  profound  is 
highly  characteristic  of  his  own  Nature  poems. 
On  one  page  is  a  fragment  like  that  "To  a  Snow- 
flake,"  of  incredible  delicacy — on  the  next,  an  ode 
that  thunders  into  sublimity.  It  is  interesting  to 
study  in  the  following  stanzas  an  example  of  this 
double  manner  :  the  personal  appeal  to  the  flower, 
and  the  equally  subjective,  although  apparently 
impersonal,  interpretation  of  the  sun's  diurnal 
ministry.  The  first  quoted  lines  are  from  a  poem, 
"To  Daisies,"  posthumously  published  in  the 
Atlantic  Monthly : 

Ah,  drops  of  gold  in  whitening  flame 

Burning,  we  know  your  lovely  name — 

Daisies,  that  little  children  pull ! 

Like  all  weak  things,  over  the  strong 

Ye  do  not  know  your  power  for  wrong, 

And  much  abuse  your  feebleness. 

Daisies,  that  little  children  pull, 

As  ye  are  weak,  be  merciful ! 

O  hide  your  eyes,  they  are  to  me 

Beautiful  insupportably. 

Or  be  but  conscious  ye  are  fair, 

And  I  your  loveliness  could  bear, 

But,  being  fair  so  without  art, 

Ye  vex  the  silted  memories  of  my  heart ! 


150  THE  POETS'  CHANTRY 

This  from  the  "  Orient  Ode,"  a  pageant  of  com- 
pelling beauty,  is  already  dear  to  every  lover  of 
Francis  Thompson  : 

Lo,  in  the  sanctuaried  East, 

Day,  a  dedicated  priest 

In  all  his  robes  pontifical  exprest, 

Lifteth  slowly,  lifteth  sweetly, 

From  out  its  Orient  tabernacle  drawn, 

Yon  orbed  sacrament  confest 

Which  sprinkles  benediction  through  the  dawn  ; 

And  when  the  grave  procession's  ceased, 

The  earth  with  due  illustrious  rite 

Blessed, — ere  the  frail  fingers  featly 

Of  twilight,  violet-cassocked  acolyte, 

His  sacerdotal  stoles  unvest — 

Sets,  for  high  close  of  the  mysterious  feast, 

The  sun  in  august  exposition  meetly 

Within  the  flaming  monstrance  of  the  West. 

It  is  impossible  to  quote  here  from  the  "  Ode  to 
the  Setting  Sun,"  with  its  half-tragic  blending  of 
death  and  birth,  or  from  the  wild  Bacchic  gladness 
of  the  "Corymbus  for  Autumn."  For  Thompson 
can,  and  does,  rejoice  in  beauty  with  the  sensuous 
loveliness  of  Keats  himself;  albeit  very  soon  the 
visible  becomes  for  him  a  portent  and  prophecy  of 
the  invisible,  and  through  the  glad  earth-cry  roll 
dim  pealings  of  "  a  higher  and  a  solemn  voice." 
There  is  no  more  representative  expression  of  this 
very  Christian  and  very  poetic  attitude  than  in  the 
lovely  Paschal  ode,  "  From  the  Night  of  Fore- 
being,"  with  its  inspiring  burden  : 

Look  up,  O  mortals,  and  the  portent  heed  : 

In  very  deed 

Washed  with  new  fire  to  their  irradiant  birth 

Reintegrated  are  the  heavens  and  earth  ! 

From  sky  to  sod, 

The  world's  unfolded  blossom  smells  of  God. 


FRANCIS  THOMPSON 151 

Of  formally  devotional  poetry  Francis  Thomp- 
son has  written  little — "  Ex  Ore  Infantium,"  the 
soaring,  surging  lines  of  "  Assumpta  Maria,"  and 
a  few  others.  Yet  through  all  his  work  the  spiritual 
element  is  the  one  commanding,  indubitable  thing. 
And  religion  is  more  than  an  emotion  to  him  :  it  is 
a  philosophy.  The  mystery  of  pain  and  evil  one 
finds  acknowledged,  not  lightly,  but  through  cata- 
clysmic rending  of  the  spirit ;  and  a  thousandfold 
more  convincing,  because  of  this  wide-eyed  out- 
look upon  Life,  is  the  poet's  ultimate  and  persistent 
hold  upon  Faith.  "  If  hate  were  none,"  he  has 
somewhere  dared  to  ask  : 

If  hate  were  none,  would  love  burn  lowlier  bright? 
God's  fair  were  guessed  scarce  but  for  opposite  sin  ; 
Yea,  and  His  mercy,  I  do  think  it  well, 
Is  flashed  back  from  the  brazen  gates  of  Hell. 

Throughout  the  mystical  poems  which  form, 
then,  so  large  a  proportion  of  Thompson's  work, 
there  burns  a  most  poignant  message.  It  is  the 
old,  primal  story  of  God  and  the  soul,  and  one  finds 
it  thrilling  with  never-to-be-forgotten  intensity  in 
that  magnificent  ode,  "  The  Hound  of  Heaven." 

I  fled  Him,  down  the  nights  and  down  the  days  ; 

I  fled  Him,  down  the  arches  of  the  years  ; 

I  fled  Him,  down  the  labyrinthine  ways 

Of  my  own  mind  ;  and  in  the  mist  of  tears 

I  hid  from  Him,  and  under  running  laughter. 

Up  vistaed  hopes  I  sped  ; 

And  shot,  precipitated 

Adown  Titanic  glooms  of  chasmed  fears, 

From  those  strong  Feet  that  followed,  followed  after. 

But  with  unhurrying  chase, 

And  unperturbed  pace, 

Deliberate  speed,  majestic  instancy, 

They  beat — and  a  Voice  beat, 

More  instant  than  the  Feet — 

"  All  things  betray  thee,  who  betrayest  Me." 


THE  POETS'  CHANTRY 


Thus  begins  the  flight  from  this  "  tremendous 
Lover."  The  Soul  speeds  on  and  on,  knocking 
vainly  for  shelter  at  the  door  of  earthly  love  ; 
next  seeking  comradeship  with  the  elements,  in 
the  very  "  heart  of  Nature's  secrecies"  — 

But  not  by  that,  by  that,  was  eased  my  human  smart. 
In  vain  my  tears  were  wet  on  Heaven's  grey  cheek. 
For  ah  !    we  know  not  what  each  other  says, 
These  things  and  I  ;  in  sound  /speak  — 
Their  sound  is  but  their  stir,  they  speak  by  silences. 

One  by  one  fails  each  human  hope, 

Even  the  linked  fantasies,  in  whose  blossomy  twist 
I  swung  the  earth  a  trinket  at  my  wrist  : 

there  is  one  last,  bitter  cry,  and  then  —  submission  ! 
Love  has  conquered,  and  "like  a  bursting  sea" 
sounds  the  voice  of  the  Pursuer  : 

"  All  which  I  took  from  thee  I  did  but  take, 

Not  for  thy  harms, 

But  just  that  thou  might'st  seek  it  in  My  arms. 

All  which  thy  child's  mistake 

Fancies  as  lost,  I  have  stored  for  thee  at  home  : 

Rise,  clasp  My  hand,  and  come." 

Thompson  has  written  greater  poems  than  "  The 
Dread  of  Height  "  ;  but,  with  the  sole  exception 
of  the  "  Hound,"  he  has  written  nothing  more 
characteristic.  It  is  the  cry  of  a  soul  that  has 
stood  very  high  upon  the  mountain  peaks,  and  in 
the  glory  of  fire  and  cloud  feels  eternal  banish- 
ment from  the  little,  joyful  things  of  mortality  ;  for 

'Tis  to  have  drunk  too  well 
The  drink  that  is  divine 
Maketh  the  kind  earth  waste, 
And  breath  intolerable. 

Moreover,  human  feet  are  weak,  and  the  highest 


FRANCIS  THOMPSON 153 

election  none  too  sure  ;  neither  does  any  know 
the  depths  of  Hell  like  him  who  has  gazed  down 
from  Heaven's  view-point.  So  with  this  cry  of 
spiritual  isolation  is  mingled  the  pleading  voice 
of  human  impotence  : 

Some  hold,  some  stay 

O  difficult  Joy,  I  pray, 

Some  arms  of  thine, 

Not  only,  only  arms  of  mine  ! 

Lest  like  a  weary  girl  I  fall 

From  clasping  love  so  high, 

And  lacking  thus  thine  arms,  then  may 

Most  hapless  I 

Turn  utterly  to  love  of  basest  rate  ; 

For  low  they  fall  whose  fall  is  from  the  sky. 

This  Titanic  struggle  of  soul  and  sense,  of  will 
and  work,  this  struggle  which  is  man — 

Bread  predilectedly 

O'  the  worm  and  Deity  ! — 

this  battle  which  is  the  clearest  witness  of  life — 
save  only  for  those  few  who  have  attained  to  the 
"unitive"  life  of  resurgent  victory  and  peace — is 
mightily  mirrored  in  the  pages  of  Francis  Thomp- 
son. "Any  Saint,"  "To  the  Dead  Cardinal  of 
Westminster,"  "A  Judgment  in  Heaven" — in 
these  the  pillars  of  our  habitual  and  superficial 
security,  "  les  convenances,"  fall  crashing  about 
our  heads.  We  have  no  choice  but  to  gaze  at 
the  poet's  own  "  heart-perturbing  "  visions.  That 
little  matter  of  man  and  his  eternal  destiny  (matter 
of  all  the  preachers  in  all  the  ages),  it  is  this  the 
white-faced  poet  is  considering.  He  walks  through 
the  valley  of  the  great  Shadow  ;  and  what  wonder 
that  his  brows  are  bound  with  thorn  as  well  as 
cypress?  It  was  nowise  possible  that  Thompson 
should  have  escaped  melancholy — intense  and 


154  THE  POETS'  CHANTRY 

aching  melancholy,  that  scourge  of  every  sensi- 
tive mind.  Yet  his  was,  ultimately,  a  cheerful- 
ness such  as  merely  cheerful  men  may  never 
know.  ''Giotto  lived  in  a  gloomier  town  than 
Euripides,"  declares  Mr.  Chesterton  (he  who  knows 
so  well  how  to  say  serious  things  frivolously), 
"  but  in  a  gayer  universe."  And  our  poet  walked 
with  Giotto.  For  he  believed  supremely  in  God  : 
and  he  believed  in  stepping-stones  up  which  the 
soul  might  hope  to  climb  ;  down  which  God  him- 
self might,  peradventure,  descend.  In  Francis 
Thompson,  more,  seemingly,  than  in  any  poet  of 
the  present  time,  has  the  ascetic  ideal  found  a 
champion  and  an  exponent. 

Lose,  that  the  lost  thou  may'st  receive; 
Die,  for  none  other  way  canst  live, 

he  bids  us,  in  words  which  might  echo  those  once 
spoken  beside  the  Sea  of  Galilee.  The  world  has 
never  been  willing  to  accept  them  without  a 
struggle.  Indeed,  may  it  not  be  that  only  through 
struggle  and  conflict  and  defeat  is  their  truth 
made  manifest? 

No  really  morbid  heart  has  ever  been  able  to 
delight  in  children  :  but  Thompson  loved  them 
frankly  and  faithfully.  Few  poets  have  written 
more  feelingly  of  (one  does  not  say  for)  these 
little  ones.  This  is  patent  in  all  three  volumes  of 
his  verse — while  of  the  second  it  is,  of  course,  the 
very  raison  d'etre.  A  passage  of  imperishable 
beauty  in  the  Sister  Songs  hints  how  one  scarcely 
more  than  a  child, 

a  flower 

Fallen  from  the  budded  coronal  of  Spring, 
And  through  the  city  streets  blown  withering-, 

had  lent  her  ministering  touch  to  the  poet's  heart 
in  those  dark,  earlier  days.  And  all  the  world 


FRANCIS  THOMPSON  155 

knows  how,  in  the  children  of  Alice  and  Wilfrid 
Meynell,  Thompson  found  one  of  his  inspirations. 
He  has  left,  as  a  memorial  of  his  love  for  them, 
the  verses  to  his  God-child,  Francis  Meynell  ;  also 
a  lovely  fantasy,  "  The  Making  of  Viola";  the 
whole  of  Sister  Songs;  "The  Poppy";  and  that 
uniquely  haunting  poem  "To  Monica  Thought 
Dying,"  with  its  image  of  Death  holding  state 
among  the  little  broken  playthings,  thrice  in- 
tolerable with  "  this  dreadful  childish  babble  on 
his  tongue."  In  a  niche  of  its  own  must  stand 
that  exquisite  "  Ex  Ore  Infantium" — 

Little  Jesus,  wast  Thou  shy 
Once,  and  just  so  small  as  I  ? 
And  what  did  it  feel  like  to  be 
Out  of  Heaven,  and  just  like  me? — 

of  which  no  detached  passage  can  hope  to  re- 
produce the  tender  gaiety.  It  recalls  nothing  so 
much  as  one  of  Crashaw's  divinely  human  touches, 
his  marvelling 

That  He  whom  the  sun  serves  should  faintly  peepe 
Through  clouds  of  Infant  flesh  :  that  He,  the  old 
Eternall  Word  should  be  a  Child,  and  weepe. 

Manifestly,  Thompson's  viewpoint  (the  viewpoint 
of  verses  such  as  u  Daisy  "  and  "  The  Poppy  ")  is 
very  far  from  being  a  childlike  one.  But  his  are 
the  musings  of  one  who,  having  known  the  full 
measure  of  manhood — having  known  life  and  love 
and  the  grave — has  still  a  heart  meet  for  "  the 
nurseries  of  Heaven." 

We  have  already  suggested  the  inevitable 
thing  :  and  now,  perforce,  we  remember  that  one 
of  the  first — yea,  and  one  of  the  last — titles  laid  by 
appreciative  critics  at  our  poet's  feet  was,  "the 
greater  Crashaw."  It  is  as  deceptive  as  such 
generalisations  have,  in  the  main,  proved  them- 


156  THE  POETS'  CHANTRY 

selves  to  be.  To  point  out  that  the  human 
aspiration  for  supernal  beauty,  which  Edgar  Poe 
once  defined  as  the  essence  of  the  poetic  principle, 
was  supremely  potent  in  both  men  is  merely  say- 
ing that  both  were  authentic  poets.  The  further 
resemblance  would  seem  to  lie  in  that  mystical 
and  spiritual  attitude  toward  life,  in  that  fervour 
of  imagination  coupled  with  devotional  tenderness 
(a  "divine  familiarity"  Thompson  himself  once 
called  it  in  commenting  on  the  older  poet)  which 
may  almost  be  claimed  as  a  birthright  by  our 
Catholic  songsters.  But  Crashaw's  was  essentially 
a  lyric  genius  ;  and  Francis  Thompson  is  as 
dramatic  as  Browning.  Temperamental  contrasts 
are  quite  as  striking :  for  while  the  voice  of 
Richard  Crashaw  comes  to  us  in  tones  of  angelic 
sweetness,  soaring  ever  to  the  clouds  as  to  its 
native  sphere,  the  author  of  the  "  Hound  of 
Heaven  "  has  pierced  to  the  depths  of  passional 
experiences,  and  speaks  in  "  words  accursed  of 
comfortable  men."  The  one  might  well  be  called 
the  poet  of  Bethlehem— the  other,  of  Gethsemane  ! 
Obvious  enough,  for  the  most  part,  are  the 
imperfections  of  Thompson's  poetic  work.  But 
his  was  overwhelmingly  a  creative  genius,  and  his 
faults  are,  almost  without  exception,  those  secon- 
dary ones  of  criticism.  He  is  prone  to  ellipse  and 
obscurity,  to  a  magnificent  anarchy  of  construction : 
more  than  once  will  his  robust  and  esoteric  choice 
of  words  plunge  the  reader  in  semi-helplessness. 
Drawbacks  such  as  these  may  seem  superficial 
enough  (and  therefore  the  more  unnecessary),  but 
they  have  their  root  in  some  fundamental  idiosyn- 
crasy of  thought,  and  are  very  rarely  overcome. 
In  a  searching  critique  upon  the  first  poems, 
Coventry  Patmore  granted  Thompson  all  the 
masculine  virtues  of  "  profound  thought  and 
far-fetched  splendour  of  imagery,  and  nimble- 


FRANCIS  THOMPSON  157 

wilted  discernment  of  those  analogies  which  are 
the  'roots'  of  the  poet's  language,"  but  regretted 
his  lack  of  the  "  shy  moderation  which  never  says 
as  much  as  it  means."  Yet,  when  all  is  said,  one 
hesitates  to  bring  the  "personal  equation"  too 
close  to  a  poet's  individuality,  or  to  criticise  the 
passion  flower  because  it  is  neither  a  rose  nor  an 
asphodel.  Why  should  it  not  be — just  a  passion 
flower?  In  all  nature  there  are  few  things  more 
tragically  significant.  And  no  one  who  has  read 
those  illuminating  prose  reviews,  contributed  origi- 
nally to  the  Athenceum  or  the  Academy ',  could 
for  an  instant  question  Thompson's  fundamental 
critical  ability.  Melody  he  knew,  and  dissonance 
he  knew,  with  purposeful  effect :  but  his  was  the 
large  way  of  //  Magnifico  in  things  alike  good 
and  ill. 

Death  has  done  much  for  Francis  Thompson  ; 
still  he  is  not  yet  under  danger  of  becoming  a 
"  popular  poet."  In  more  than  a  score  of  passages 
he  has  imprisoned  emotions  still  palpitating  with 
life  ;  he  has  found  words  for  those  flashes  of  con- 
sciousness which,  almost  to  our  own  souls,  remain 
inarticulate.  But  they  are  not  surface  emotions, 
and  in  mode  of  expression  the  poet  was  supremely 
heedless  of  the  wide  appeal.  Moreover,  being  far 
from  obvious,  his  poems  demand  somewhat  of  the 
reader's  co-operation,  with  the  inevitable  result  of 
minimising  the  circle  of  these  readers.  No  one 
was  more  conscious  of  this  than  Thompson  him- 
self in  the  rare  moments  when  he  can  be  said  to 
have  been  at  all  conscious  of  his  reader;  "The 
Cloud's  Swan  Song  "  alludes  to  it  with  a  delicate 
and  piercing  pathos.  But  this,  after  all,  is  the 
slightest  test  of  poetic  worth.  Those  who  are  will- 
ing to  delve  a  little  will  find  real  gold  in  Francis 
Thompson's  volumes — gold  of  a  burning  purity 
and  brilliance  all  too  rare  in  the  mines  of  latter- 


158  THE  POETS'  CHANTRY 

day  poetry.  His  work  is  a  precious  heritage : 
memorable  for  its  artistic  beauty  and  its  deep 
human  sympathy  ;  but  in  the  last  analysis  most 
memorable  for  its  essential  Catholicity,  its  spiri- 
tual profundity  and  elevation. 

Ah  !  let  the  sweet  birds  of  the  Lord 
With  earth's  waters  make  accord  ; 
Teach  how  the  crucifix  may  be 
Carven  from  the  laurel-tree, 
Fruit  of  the  Hesperides 
Burnish  take  on  Eden-trees, 
The  Muses'  sacred  grove  be  wet 
With  the  red  dew  of  Olivet, 
And  Sappho  lay  her  burning  brows 
In  white  Cecilia's  lap  of  snows  ! 

It  is  Thompson  himself  who  has  achieved  this 
costly  and  mystical  quest ! 


ALICE   MEYNELL 

THE  world  was  first  aware  of  Alice  Meynell  (or  as 
she  then  was,  Alice  Thompson)  as  a  poet  when 
the  little  initial  volume,  Preludes,  blossomed  into 
life  like  a  March  violet — early  enough,  one  can 
never  forget,  to  win  Ruskin's  enthusiastic  praise. 
Three  of  its  selections  ("San  Lorenzo's  Mother," 
together  with  the  closing  lines  of  the  "Daisy" 
sonnet  and  that  unforgettable  "  Letter  from  a 
Girl  to  Her  Own  Old  Age  ")  he  forthright  declared 
"the  finest  things  I  have  yet  seen,  or  felt,  in 
modern  verse."  That  was  a  personal  estimate, 
to  be  sure,  since  Tennyson,  Browning,  Patmore, 
and  Swinburne  were  all  in  the  act  of  writing 
memorable  things ;  but  what  a  thunderously 
significant  tribute  to  lay  at  the  feet  of  a  young 
girl  just  lifting  up  her  voice  in  song  !  Abyssus 
abyssum  mvocat. 

More  than  a  quarter  of  a  century  has  passed, 
and  in  the  actual  matter  of  poetry,  Mrs.  Meynell 
has  published  but  two  additional  volumes,  the 
Poems  of  1893  (an  augmented  reprint  of  the 
original  booklet)  and  the  slight  but  weighty 
Later  Poems  of  1901  ;  these,  with  fugitive  strains 
of  rare  beauty  in  some  favoured  review,  make  up 
the  sum.  The  voice  in  its  moment  was  ex  cathedra; 
having  spoken,  she  may  hold  her  peace. 

She  has  elected  all  along  to  speak  in  a  deliber- 
ately vestal  and  cloistral  poetry.  Remote  as  the 
mountain  snows,  yet  near  as  the  wind  upon  our 
face,  is  her  song.  It  is  seldom  sensuous,  the  very 
imagery  being  evoked,  in  the  main,  from  the 


160  THE  POETS'  CHANTRY 

intellectual  vision ;  and  there  are  moments  when 
"amorous  thought  has  sucked  pale  Fancy's 
breath "  quite  out  of  the  stanzas.  Yet  these 
tremble  with  a  deep  and  impassioned  emotion- 
emotion  which  seems  aloof  because  it  is  so  interior. 
For  the  characteristic  note  of  Mrs.  Meynell's  music 
is  not  yearning  or  aspiration ;  it  is  not  the  dear 
and  consummate  fruition  of  life  ;  still  less  is  it  a 
mourning  over  things  lost.  It  is  the  note  of  active 
renunciation.  Renunciation  of  the  beloved  by 
the  lover,  that  both  may  be  more  true  to  the 
Heart  of  Love ;  renunciation  by  the  poet,  the 
artist,  not  only  of  the  poor,  precious  human 
comforting,  but  likewise  of  his  own  sweet  prodi- 
gality in  art — that  he  may  see  a  few  things  clearly, 
without  excess  ;  in  fine,  the  ultimate  and  inevitable 
renunciations  of  the  elect  soul. 

Renunciation  of  the  beloved  by  the  lover ;  that, 
surely  is  not  a  new  note ;  quite  a  universal  note, 
life  and  art  would  seem  to  say.  It  is  instinct  with 
the  power  and  passion  which  are  the  raison  d'etre 
of  poetry.  Yet  it  is  never  a  seriously  chosen  and 
admitted  strain  save  by  the  very  little  flock — and 
Mrs.  Meynell  has  made  it  quite  her  own.  One 
exquisite  sonnet,  "Renouncement,"  has  concen- 
trated the  message  ;  but  the  companion  poem  may 
bediscerned  to  beatwith  a  still  more  poignant  music. 
"  After  a  Parting  "  it  is  named  : — 

Farewell  has  long  been  said  ;  I  have  foregone  thee  ; 

I  never  name  thee  even. 
But  how  shall  I  learn  virtues  and  yet  shun  thee? 

For  thou  art  so  near  Heaven 
That  heavenward  meditations  pause  upon  thee. 

Thou  dost  beset  the  path  to  every  shrine  ; 

My  trembling  thoughts  discern 
Thy  goodness  in  the  good  for  which  I  pine  ; 

And,  if  I  turn  from  but  one  sin,  I  turn 
Unto  a  smile  of  thine. 


ALICE  MEYNELL 

From  a  photograph  by  Resta 


ALICE   MEYNELL 161 

How  shall  I  thrust  thee  apart 

Since  all  my  growth  tends  to  thee  night  and  day — 
To  thee  faith,  hope,  and  art? 

Swift  are  the  currents  setting  all  one  way  ; 
They  draw  my  life,  my  life,  out  of  my  heart. 

Another  early  poem,  "  To  the  Beloved,"  should 
be  quoted  in  contrast.  Surpassingly  tender  and 
delicate  is  its  feeling  ;  but  its  reticence,  its  singu- 
lar peace,  are  almost  a  rebuke  to  more  vehement 
possessors : 

Oh,  not  more  subtly  silence  strays 

Amongst  the  winds,  between  the  voices, 

Mingling  alike  with  pensive  lays, 
And  with  the  music  that  rejoices, 

Than  thou  art  present  in  my  days. 


Thou  art  like  silence  all  unvexed 

Though  wild  words  part  my  soul  from  thee. 
Thou  art  like  silence  unperplexed, 

A  secret  and  a  mystery 
Between  one  footfall  and  the  next. 


Darkness  and  solitude  shine,  for  me. 

For  life's  fair  outward  part  are  rife 
The  silver  noises  ;  let  them  be. 

It  is  the  very  soul  of  life 
Listens  for  thee,  listens  for  thee. 

Even  for  this  denial,  this  abeyance  of  love,  has 
Alice  Meynell  reserved  her  own  quintessential 
vehemence. 

All  this  perennial,  repetitional  sacrifice  of  the 
lower  to  the  higher  good  was  foreshadowed  in  her 
earliest  verses.  It  is  a  solitariness  never  far  from 
our  poet's  song — a  wistful  loneliness  in  the  youth- 
ful stanzas;  a  pain  high-heartedly  born,  welcomed, 

M 


162  THE  POETS'  CHANTRY 

treasured  above  all  cheaper  gifts  in  the  more 
mature  pages.  Much  has  been  said  about  that 
unique  and  heart-shaking  "Letter  from  a  Girl 
to  her  Own  Old  Age."  But  there  is  a  less  known 
apostrophe,  "The  Poet  to  his  Childhood,"  about 
which  something  remains  to  be  spoken.  It 
probes  to  the  heart  of  the  sacrificial  vocation — 
whether  poetic  or  sacerdotal  matters  little  : 

If  it  prove  a  life  of  pain,  greater  have  I  judged  the  gain, 
With  a  singing  soul  for  music's  sake  I  climb  and  meet 

the  rain, 

And  I  choose,  whilst  I  am  calm,  my  thought  and  labour- 
ing to  be 

Unconsoled  by  sympathy. 

Mrs.  Meynell  has  loved  the  Lady  Poverty  as 
truly  as  ever  the  Assisian  did  :  but  hers  is  a  Lady 
whose  realm  is  over  letters  as  well  as  life.  She 
dwells  in  the  twilight  and  the  dawn  ;  her  cool, 
quiet  fingers  are  pressed  upon  the  temples  of 
love ;  in  "  slender  landscape  and  austere,"  in 
nature  marvellously  but  not  rapturously  under- 
stood, she  is  found.  And  close  beside  her  treads 
another  Lady,  "our  sister,  the  Death  of  the 
Body  " —  Death  the  Revealer,  making  clear  at 
last  the  mysteries  of  weary  Life.  This  is  distinctly 
the  motive,  very  personal  and  very  perfect,  not 
merely  of  the  much-praised  sonnet  "To  a  Daisy," 
but  of  Mrs.  Meynell's  Nature  poetry  as  a  whole. 

Through  "The  Neophyte"  and  "San  Lorenzo 
Giustiniani's  Mother"  the  selfsame  cry  is  variously 
but  unmistakably  heard.  It  stings  the  soul  in 
that  late  and  mystical  lyric  : 

Why  wilt  thou  chide, 
Who  hast  attained  to  be  denied  ? 

Oh  learn,  above 
All  price  is  my  refusal,  Love. 

My  sacred  Nay 


ALICE  MEYNELL  163 

Was  never  cheapened  by  the  way  ; 

Thy  single  sorrow  crowns  thee  lord 
Of  an  unpurchasable  word. 

Oh  strong  !     Oh  pure  ! 
As  Yea  makes  happier  loves  secure, 

I  vow  thee  this 
Unique  rejection  of  a  kiss  ! 


More  than  one  meditation  of  this  final  volume 
suggest  the  influence  of  that  immemorial  (and  in 
these  latter  days  too  little  known)  treasure-house 
of  poetry  and  vision,  the  Roman  Breviary.  But 
always  the  distinction  and  the  originality  of  Alice 
Meynell's  thought,  the  peculiar  personality  of  her 
vision,  have  about  them  a  very  sacredness.  Not 
lightly  comes  the  illumination  of  the  singular 
soul :  that  particular  judgment  so  transcendently 
more  appalling  than  the  final  and  general  judg- 
ment !  She  has  not  feared  to  travel  up  the 
mountain  side  alone — to  look  down,  with  eyes 
that  have  known  both  tears  and  the  drying  of 
tears,  upon  the  ways  of  human  life. 

In  the  matter  of  artistry  and  poetic  technique, 
Mrs.  Meynell's  work  is  like  fine  gold  smithery  ; 
classic  gold  smithery,  exquisite  and  austere.  "I 
could  wish  abstention  to  exist,  and  even  to  be 
evident  in  my  words,"  she  has  somewhere  written ; 
but  the  words  are  scrupulously  chosen.  Her 
mastery  over  slight  forms — the  quatrain,  the 
couplet — is  quite  as  consummate  and  almost  as 
felicitous  as  Father  Tabb's.  And  through  this 
ethereal  poetry  shine  lines  of  the  highest  and 
most  serious  power. 

They  who  doomed  by  infallible  decrees 
Unnumbered  man  to  the  innumerable  grave, 

falls  upon  the  ear  with  Miltonic  grandeur.     And 


164  THE  POETS'  CHANTRY 

any  poet  might  rejoice  in  the  fancy  which  per- 
ceives day's  memories  flocking  home  at  dusk  to 
the  " dove-cote  doors  of  sleep,"  or  cries  out  so 
subtly  in  the  colourless  February  dawning  : 

A  poet's  face  asleep  is  this  grey  morn  ! 

Mrs.  Meynell's  poetry,  like  a  certain  school  of 
modern  music,  suggests  and  betrays  rather  than 
expresses  emotion.  It  is  definite  but  intangible. 
It  creates  an  atmosphere  of  angelically  clear 
thought,  of  rare  delicacies  of  feeling,  and  speaks 
with  a  perfect  reticence.  Mistakenly,  perhaps, 
the  hasty  might  dub  it  a  poetry  of  promise  :  on 
the  contrary,  it  is  a  poetry  of  uncommonly  fine 
achievement.  But  it  does  not  achieve  the  expected 
thing.  We  are  conscious  of  a  light,  a  flash,  a 
voice,  a  perfume — the  soul  of  the  Muse  has  passed 
by.  And  we  were  looking  for  the  body,  flower- 
crowned  ! 

When  all  is  said,  it  is  in  her  prose  that  Mrs. 
Meynell  has  attained  the  most  compelling  and  in- 
dubitable distinction.  In  much  critical  work  and 
some  biography,  and  in  a  series  of  essays  cover- 
ing subjects  all  the  way  from  "  impressionist " 
art  to  the  ways  of  childhood — or  from  "  Pocket 
Vocabularies"  to  the  "  Hours  of  Sleep  " — her  pen 
has  prevailed  with  a  masterful  delicacy.  These 
brief  pages  are  seldom  distinctly  literary  in  theme, 
yet  they  have  made  literature.  Scarcely  ever  are 
they  professedly  religious,  yet  the  whole  science 
of  the  saints  rests  by  implication  within  their 
pages.  Alice  Meynell  is  the  true  contemplative 
of  letters.  For  contemplation,  which  in  the 
spiritual  world  has  been  described  as  a  looking 
at  and  listening  to  God,  is  in  the  world  of  art 
a  looking  at  and  listening  to  life.  It  is  an  ex- 
ceedingly quiet  and  sensitive  attention  to  all  that 
others  see  but  transiently,  superficially,  in  the 


ALICE  MEYNELL 165 

large.  We  can  scarcely  believe  many  minds 
capable  of  the  exquisitely  subtle  and  sustained 
attention,  the  delicate  weighing,  the  differentia- 
tion, and  withal  the  liberal  sympathy,  which  have 
been  the  very  keynote  of  her  criticism.  Take,  as 
an  instance,  this  pregnant  passage  upon  the  return 
and  periodicity  of  our  mental  processes  : 

"  Distances  are  not  gauged,  ellipses  not  mea- 
sured, velocities  not  ascertained,  times  not  known. 
Nevertheless  the  recurrence  is  sure.  What  the 
mind  suffered  last  week,  or  last  year,  it  does  not 
suffer  now  ;  but  it  will  suffer  again  next  week  or 
next  year.  Happiness  is  not  a  matter  of  events  ; 
it  depends  upon  the  tides  of  the  mind.  Disease  is 
metrical,  closing  in  at  shorter  and  shorter  periods 
toward  death,  sweeping  abroad  at  longer  and 
longer  intervals  towards  recovery.  .  .  .  Even  the 
burden  of  a  spiritual  distress  unsolved  is  bound 
to  leave  the  heart  to  a  temporary  peace  ;  and  re- 
morse itself  does  not  remain — it  returns.  Gaiety 
takes  us  by  a  dear  surprise.  .  .  .  Love  itself  has 
tidal  times — lapses  and  ebbs  which  are  due  to  the 
metrical  rule  of  the  interior  heart,  but  which  the 
lover  vainly  and  unkindly  attributes  to  some  out- 
ward alteration  in  the  beloved." 

Coventry  Patmore  (who  in  his  turn  has  been 
the  subject  of  Mrs.  Meynell's  illuminative  criti- 
cism) declared  fully  one  half  of  the  volume  just 
quoted,  The  Rhythm  of  Life,  to  be  "classical 
work,  embodying  as  it  does  new  thought  in  per- 
fect language,  and  bearing  in  every  sentence  the 
hall-mark  of  genius."  Only  the  poets,  perhaps, 
have  shared  with  the  saints  this  singular  con- 
templative attention  to  things  great  and  small. 
And  in  the  Nature  painting  which  colours  Mrs. 
Meynell's  pages  the  same  quality  is  conspicuous. 
Neither  the  lyre  nor  the  brush  seems  strange  to 
the  hand  which  has  so  sketched  for  us  the  majesty 
M  2 


166  THE  POETS'  CHANTRY 

of  the  cloud — not  guardian  of  the  sun's  rays 
merely,  but  "the  sun's  treasurer";  the  course  of 
the  south-west  wind,  regnant  and  imperious  ;  and 
that  "heroic  sky,"  beneath  whose  light  "few  of 
the  things  that  were  ever  done  upon  earth  are 
great  enough "  to  have  dared  the  doing.  Not 
Wordsworth  himself  has  more  graciously  sung  of 
the  daffodil.  And  who  has  so  understandingly 
praised  the  modest  yet  prevailing  grass  of  the 
fields,  or  the  trees  of  July,  or  given  so  discern- 
ing a  study  to  the  gentle  "  Colour  of  Life  "  ? 

Up  and  down  upon  the  earth,  to  and  fro  upon 
it,  wander  the  children  of  men  ;  but  few  indeed 
may  be  trusted  to  catch  the  authentic  Spirit  of 
Place.  Scarcely  even  our  beloved  Robert  Louis, 
it  would  seem,  since  we  have  his  own  record  that 
the  act  of  voyaging  was  an  end  in  itself — there 
being 

nothing  under  Heaven  so  blue 
That's  fairly  worth  the  travelling"  to ! 

But  to  the  eyes  of  this  woman  there  is  not  the 
same  blue  in  more  than  a  single  zenith.  "  Spirit 
of  place ! "  she  cries  in  one  most  characteristic 
passage,  "It  is  for  this  we  travel,  to  surprise  its 
subtlety  ;  and  where  it  is  a  strong  and  dominant 
angel,  that  place,  seen  once,  abides  entire  in  the 
memory  with  all  its  own  accidents,  its  habits,  its 
breath,  its  name.  .  .  .  The  untravelled  spirit  of 
place — not  to  be  pursued,  for  it  never  flies,  but 
always  to  be  discovered,  never  absent,  without 
variation — lurks  in  the  byways  and  rules  over  the 
tower,  indestructible,  an  indescribable  unity.  It 
awaits  us  always  in  its  ancient  and  eager  fresh- 
ness. It  is  sweet  and  nimble  within  its  imme- 
morial boundaries,  but  it  never  crosses  them.  .  .  . 
Was  ever  journey  too  hard  or  too  long,  that  had 
to  pay  such  a  visit?  And  if  by  good  fortune  it  is 


ALICE  MEYNELL  167 

a  child  who  is  the  pilgrim,  the  spirit  of  place  gives 
him  a  peculiar  welcome.  .  .  .  He  is  well  used  to 
words  and  voices  that  he  does  not  understand,  and 
this  is  a  condition  of  his  simplicity  ;  and  when 
those  unknown  words  are  bells,  loud  in  the  night, 
they  are  to  him  as  homely  and  as  old  as  lulla- 
bies." 

It  is  almost  a  pity,  for  letters,  that  so  few  poets 
have  been  mothers  ;  it  is  the  abiding  pity  of  child- 
hood that  so  few  mothers  have  been  poets  !  Mrs. 
Meynell  has  an  entire  volume  dedicated  to  The 
Children^  and  sealed  with  that  gracious  under- 
standing of  child-life  which  nothing  other  than 
experience  can  quite  authenticate.  It  is  so  easy 
to  sentimentalise  over  children — easy,  also,  to  re- 
gard them  as  necessary  nuisances  :  but  to  bear 
with  them  consistently,  in  a  spirit  of  love  and 
of  discovery,  is  a  beautiful  achievement.  "  Fellow 
travellers  with  a  bird"  (as  Alice  Meynell  felicit- 
ously calls  the  protective  adults)  may  learn  strange 
and  hidden  things,  an  they  have  eyes  to  see  or 
hearts  to  understand.  Not  so  impatiently  will 
they  frown  upon  the  strange  excitement  which 
sparkles  from  the  child's  eyes,  as  from  the  kitten's 
at  dusk — inherited  memories  of  the  immemorial 
hunt,  and  of  the  " predatory  dark"  a  thousand 
years  ago.  Not  so  surprising  will  seem  the 
eternal  conflict  of  bed-time,  if  they  once  realise 
the  humorous  and  pretty  fact  that  the  little  crea- 
ture "is  pursued  and  overtaken  by  sleep,  caught, 
surprised,  and  overcome.  He  goes  no  more  to 
sleep  than  he  takes  a  'constitutional'  with  his 
hoop  and  hoopstick."  In  "  The  Child  of  Tumult" 
Mrs.  Meynell  has  given  a  most  tenderly  subtle 
study  ;  and  here  is  her  word  upon  the  forgiveness 
of  children  : — 

"It  is  assuredly  in  the  absence  of  resentment 
that  consists  the  virtue  of  childhood.  What  other 


168  THE  POETS'  CHANTRY 

thing  are  we  to  learn  of  them  ?  Not  simplicity, 
for  they  are  intricate  enough.  Not  gratitude,  for 
their  usual  sincere  thanklessness  makes  half  the 
pleasure  of  doing  them  good.  Not  obedience,  for 
the  child  is  born  with  the  love  of  liberty.  And  as 
for  humility,  the  boast  of  a  child  is  the  frankest 
thing  in  the  world.  ...  It  is  the  sweet  and  entire 
forgiveness  of  children,  who  ask  pity  for  their 
sorrows  from  those  who  have  caused  them,  who 
do  not  perceive  that  they  are  wronged,  who  never 
dream  that  they  are  forgiving,  and  who  make  no  bar- 
gain for  apologies — it  is  this  that  men  and  women 
are  urged  to  learn  of  a  child.  Graces  more  con- 
fessedly childlike  they  make  shift  to  teach  them- 
selves." 

Many  a  man,  and  many  a  woman,  have  written 
more  nobly  than  they  have  lived  :  into  the  art  has 
gone  the  truest  part  of  the  soul.  But  what  unique 
conviction  breathes  from  work  which  is  at  one 
with  life — nay,  which  is  the  fruit  of  deep  and 
costly  living !  The  acuteness,  the  activity,  the 
profundity  of  Mrs.  Meynell's  thought  could  not  fail 
to  achieve  their  own  place  in  English  letters.  But 
her  sympathy  and  her  eternal  Tightness  of  vision 
are  qualities  in  which  we  rejoice,  humbled.  These 
have  given  to  her  work  that  peculiar  intuitive 
truth  which  is  the  rarest  of  beauties.  "  Her 
manner,"  wrote  Mr.  George  Meredith,  "presents 
to  me  the  image  of  one  accustomed  to  walk  in 
holy  places  and  keep  the  eye  of  a  fresh  mind  on 
our  tangled  world."  But  no  single  virtue  of  all 
Mrs.  Meynell's  work  is  of  the  obvious  or  popular 
kind.  Her  pages  are  packed  with  thought,  and 
the  style — one  of  exceptional  precision  and  excep- 
tional beauty — is  yet  given  to  ellipse,  to  sugges- 
tion rather  than  emphasis,  and  to  a  quite  inalien- 
able subtlety.  She  speaks  to  the  higher,  even  the 
highest,  faculties  of  the  mind.  She  has  pleaded 


ALICE  MEYNELL  169 

all  along  for  singularity  of  soul,  for  distinction 
and  elevation  of  personality,  for  the  rejection  of 
many  things  from  our  multitudinous  modern  life. 

Sometimes,  as  in  "  Decivilised,"  it  is  with  the 
trenchant  wit  and  irony  that  her  sentence  has  been 
passed  : 

"  The  difficulty  of  dealing — in  the  course  of  any 
critical  duty — with  decivilised  man  lies  in  this  : 
when  you  accuse  him  of  vulgarity — sparing  him, 
no  doubt,  the  word — he  defends  himself  against 
the  charge  of  barbarism.  Especially  from  new 
soil — transatlantic,  colonial — he  faces  you,  bronzed, 
with  a  half  conviction  of  savagery,  partly  per- 
suaded of  his  own  youthfulness  of  race.  He 
writes — and  recites — poems  about  ranches  and  can- 
yons ;  they  are  designed  to  betray  the  recklessness 
of  his  nature  and  to  reveal  the  good  that  lurks 
in  the  lawless  ways  of  a  young  society.  .  .  . 
American  fancy  played  long  this  pattering  part  of 
youth.  The  New  Englander  hastened  to  assure 
you,  with  so  self-denying  a  face,  he  did  not  wear 
war-paint  and  feathers,  that  it  became  doubly 
difficult  to  communicate  to  him  that  you  had  sus- 
pected him  of  nothing  wilder  than  a  second-hand 
dress  coat.  And  when  it  was  a  question  not  of 
rebuke  but  of  praise,  the  American  was  ill-content 
with  the  word  of  the  judicious  who  lauded  him 
for  some  delicate  successes  in  continuing  some- 
thing of  the  literature  of  England,  something 
of  the  art  of  France.  .  .  .  Even  now  English 
voices,  with  violent  commonplace,  are  constantly 
calling  upon  America  to  begin — to  begin,  for  the 
world  is  expectant — whereas,  there  is  no  begin- 
ning for  her,  but,  instead,  a  continuity  which  only 
a  constant  care  can  guide  into  sustained  refine- 
ment and  can  save  from  decivilisation.  .  .  . 
Who  shall  discover  why  derivation  becomes 
degeneration,  and  where  and  when  and  how 


170  THE  POETS'  CHANTRY 

the  bastardy  befalls  ?  The  decivilised  have  every 
grace  as  the  antecedent  of  their  vulgarities,  every 
distinction  as  the  precedent  of  their  mediocrities. 
.  .  .  They  were  born  into  some  tendency  to 
derogation,  into  an  inclination  for  things  mentally 
inexpensive." 

But  oftener  the  word  has  been  spoken  gently, 
almost  casually ;  that  the  multitude  seeing  might 
not  see,  and  hearing  might  not  understand.  Yet 
this  attitude  of  Mrs.  Meynell's  is  as  far  as  possible 
from  disdain.  For  the  "narrow  house,"  the 
obtuse  mind  baffled  and  inarticulate,  for  the 
shackled  body,  the  groping  soul,  she  has  spoken 
with  largest  sympathy.  Further  than  Charles 
Lamb's  goes  her  defence  of  beggars — since  she 
pleads  their  right  not  simply  to  free  existence  but 
to  a  common  and  fraternal  courtesy.  All  the  great 
and  elemental  things  of  life  have  claimed  allegiance 
from  Alice  Meynell  ;  her  mind,  like  Raphael's, 
"a  temple  for  all  lovely  things  to  flock  to  and 
inhabit."  Love  and  the  bond  of  love,  the  grace 
and  gaiety  of  life,  the  woman's  need  of  a  free  and 
educated  courage,  the  delicacies  of  friendship — one 
finds  their  praise  upon  her  reticent  lips  :  these, 
with  unflinching  truth  to  self,  and  a  faith  lofty  and 
exquisite.  For  the  pathos  of  the  sentimentalist 
(ubiquitous  and  not  without  a  suspicion  of  the 
ready-made)  our  artist  has  shown  slight  patience. 
She  will  not  laugh  at  her  fellow-men  ;  neither  will 
she  insist  upon  weeping  over  them.  There  is 
restraint,  "composure  "  in  her  dream  of  life.  Yet 
perchance  we  open  the  fortuitous  page,  and  some 
such  lines  as  these  face  us  : 

"It  is  a  curious  slight  to  generous  Fate  that 
man  should,  like  a  child,  ask  for  one  thing  many 
times.  Her  answer  every  time  is  a  resembling 
but  new  and  single  gift ;  until  the  day  when  she 
shall  make  the  one  tremendous  difference  among 


ALICE   MEYNELL  171 

her  gifts — and  make  it  perhaps  in  secret — by 
naming  one  of  them  the  ultimate.  What,  for 
novelty?  what,  for  singleness ?  what,  for  separ- 
ateness,  can  equal  the  last?  Of  many  thousand 
kisses  the  poor  last — but  even  the  kisses  of  your 
mouth  are  all  numbered." 
It  is  as  old — as  sweet  and  as  sad — as  the  world  ! 

Art  to  Mrs.  Meynell  has  been  a  thrice-holy 
thing  ;  a  vocation  of  priestly  dignity,  of  priestly 
pain,  as  her  poems  witnessed.  More  than  once 
have  her  words  likened  the  convent-bell,  imperious, 
not  to  be  foregone,  to  the  poet's  elect  fetters. 
"Within  the  gate  of  these  laws  which  seem  so 
small,"  she  tells  us,  "lies  the  world  of  mystic 
virtue."  Now  here  is  a  viewpoint  of  the  highest 
and  rarest  insight.  What  urbanity,  what  sweet- 
ness, what  prevailing  harmony  it  carries  into  the 
troublous  matter  of  living.  It  has  attained  per- 
spective :  and  perspective  is  the  end  as  well  as  the 
means  of  life.  Surely  it  is  for  this  prize  alone 
that  we  wrestle  and  run.  To  treat  life  in  the  spirit 
of  art — that,  declared  another  artist-seer,  Walter 
Pater,  is  not  far  from  the  summum  bonum :  not  far 
from  the  kingdom  of  Heaven,  one  might  add, 
since  the  ultimate  artist  is  God  alone. 

Truth,  then,  has  been  the  first  of  Mrs.  Meynell's 
equipments.  First  truth  of  seeing  (which  only  the 
few  may  ever  attain),  and  then  truth  of  speaking 
— a  rare  enough  accomplishment.  With  her  work, 
as  with  that  of  Henry  James,  the  fancied  obscurity 
rises  mainly  from  this  exceedingly  delicate  truth- 
fulness ;  a  fastidious  requirement  of  the  word — the 
word — without  exaggeration,  without  superfluity — 
only  with  Mr.  James  this  desire  has  led  to  repeti- 
tion ;  with  Mrs.  Meynell,  to  reticence.  Having 
called  her  contemplative,  we  now  perceive  her  to 
be  ascetic.  The  "little  less,"  both  in  matter  and 
manner,  has  seemed  to  her  a  counsel  of  perfection. 


172  THE  POETS'  CHANTRY 

Only  we,  the  losers,  would  quarrel  now  and 
again  with  this  perfect  abstinence — would  drink 
oftener,  if  that  might  be,  from  a  spring  of  such 
diamond  clearness,  of  such  depth  and  healing. 
The  fields  of  modern  literature  had  been  more 
flowery  for  such  nourishment !  In  all  truth,  modern 
thought  must  needs  bear  both  blossom  and  fruit 
because  of  its  shy  visits.  For  Alice  Meynell  has 
been  very  potent  in  her  reserves.  She  has  borne 
the  pennant  of  the  Ideal,  with  never  a  dip  of  the 
banner,  over  many  a  causeway,  up  many  a  battle- 
mented  height.  She  has,  by  many  and  by  One, 
been  found  faithful.  Scarcely  shall  we  find  a  more 
adequate  praise  for  this  English  writer  than  her 
own  praise  of  the  Spanish  Velasquez — that  she 
has  "kept  the  chastity  of  art  when  other  masters 
were  content  with  its  honesty." 


THE     END 


THE  following  contributions  towards  the  Biblio- 
graphy of  the  poets  named  in  this  volume 
may  prove  of  assistance  to  the  general  reader. 

ROBERT   SOUTHWELL 

Poetical  Works.  Edited  by  W.  B.  Turnbull,  1856. 
(Library  of  Old  Authors.) 

Complete  Poems.  Edited  with  memorial  introduction 
and  notes  by  Alexander  B.  Grosart,  1872.  (Fuller's 
Worthies'  Library.) 

Complete  Works.  With  life  and  death.  Burns  and 
Gates  :  London,  1886. 

WILLIAM    HABINGTON 

Poems  (with  life).  Chalmers'  English  Poets,  Vol.  VI, 
1810. 

Castara.     Arber's  English  Reprints,  1869. 

The  Queene  of  Arragon.  1640  fol.  Also  in  Dodsley's 
Old  English  Plays. 

RICHARD   CRASHAW 

Complete  Works.  Edited  by  W.  B.  Turnbull,  1856. 
(Library  of  Old  Authors.) 

Complete    Works.     Edited,  with  essay  on  his   life  and 
poetry,  by  Alexander  B.  Grosart,  1868.     (Fuller's 
Worthies'  Library.) 
N  173 


i74  THE  POETS'  CHANTRY 

Poems.  Edited  by  A.  R,  Waller.  Cambridge  Univer- 
sity Press,  1904. 

"  Crashaw  "  :  Seventeenth  Century  Studies.  By  Edmund 
Gosse. 

AUBREY   DE   VERE 

Poetical  Works  (6  vols). 

May  Carols  and  Legends  of  the  Saxon  Saints. 

Legends  of  S.  Patrick  and  Other  Poems. 

Legends  and  Records  of  the  Church  and  the  Empire. 

Inisfail)  a  Lyrical  Chronicle  of  Ireland. 

Medueval  Records  and  Sonnets. 

Essays,  chiefly  on  Poetry  (2  vols). 

Recollections. 

Aubrey  de  Vere :  a  Memoir  based  on  his  unpublished 
Diaries  and  Correspondence.  By  Wilfrid  Ward. 

Aribrey  de  Vere's  Poems :  a  Selection.  Edited  by  John 
Dennis. 

Selections  from  the  Poems  of  Aubrey  de  Vere.  Edited 
with  a  preface  by  George  E.  Woodberry. 

GERARD    HOPKINS 

Father  Hopkins'  published  verses  may  be  found  in 
the  following  anthologies  : — 

Carmina  Mariana.    Edited  by  Orby  Shipley. 
Lyra  Sacra.      H.  C.  Beeching. 

Poets  and  Poetry  of  the  Century.  Edited  by  Alfred  H. 
Miles.  Vol.  VIII  (with  critique  by  Dr.  Robert 
Bridges). 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  175 

COVENTRY   PATMORE 

Complete    Works:    Poems    (2   vols),    Principle  in   Art, 
Religio  Poetce,  Rod,  Root  and  Flower. 

Saint  Bernard  on  the  Love  of  God.    Translated  by  M.  C. 
and  C.  Patmore.      1881. 

Poetry  of  Pathos  and  Delight.     A  selection  by  Alice 
Meynell. 

Florilegi^lm  Amantis.     A  selection  by  Richard  Garnett. 

Coventry  Patmore.     Memoir  and  Correspondence.     By 
Basil  Champneys. 

Coventry  Patmore.      By  Edmund  Gosse. 

LIONEL   JOHNSON 

The  Art  of  Thomas  Hardy. 

Poems. 

Ireland  and  Other  Poems. 

Selection  from  Poetical  Works. 

Post  Liminium  Essays  and  Critical  Papers. 

FRANCIS   THOMPSON 

Poems. 

Sister  Songs. 
New  Poems. 
The  Hound  of  Heaven. 

Selected  Poems.     With  Biographical  Note  by  Wilfrid 
Meynell. 

Health  and  Holiness.     A  Study  of  the  Relation  between 
Brother  Ass — the  Body,  and  his  Rider — the  Soul. 

Shelley.     With    an    Introduction  by   the    Right    Hon. 
George  Wyndham. 

St.  Ignatius  Loyola. 

Life  and  Labours  of  St.  John  Baptist  de  la  Salle, 


176  THE  POETS'  CHANTRY 

ALICE   MEYNELL 
Poems. 
Later  Poems. 
The  Rhythm  oj  Life. 
The  Colour  of  Life. 
The  Children. 
The  Spirit  of  Place. 
Ceres1  Runaway. 
John  Ruskin.     (Modern  English  Writers.) 

The  Flower  of  the  Mind.      A  Choice  among  the 
Best  Poems,  made  by  Alice  Meynell. 


INDEX 


A  Wood,  Anthony,  19,  21,  31 
Andrews,   Emily  Augusta,  94, 

95,  99,  100,  103 
Arundel,  Countess  of,  6 

Bellamy,  Anne,  8,  9 
Bellamy,  Richard,  8 
Ben  Jonson,  13 
Bridges,  Robert,  72,  85,  86 
Brooke,  Dr.  Stopford,  2 
Browning,  Robert,  92,  94,  95 
Byles,  Marianne  Caroline,  102-5, 
"3 

Cardella,  Father,  102 
"Castara"  (see  Lucy  Herbert) 
Cecil,  Lord,  9 
Challoner,  Bishop,  10 
Coleridge,  Sara,  52 
Cowley,  Abraham,  37,  42,  45 
Crashaw,  Richard,  15,  33,  36; 
birth,    37 ;    education    and 
early  life,  41  ;    conversion, 
42 ;  visit  to  Italy,  43,  44 ; 
death,   45,    46-50,    63,    65, 
122,  131,  156 
"Against      Irresolution      in 

Matters  of  Religion,"  43 
Carmen  Deo  Nostro,  43 
"  Cupid's  Cryer,"  48 
Epigrammatum        Sacrorum 

Liber,  38 
"  Epitaph  on  a  Newly  Married 

Couple,"  48 

"  Hymn   to   the    Name   and 
Honour  of  the  Admirable 
Sainte  Teresa,"  47 
"  Love's  Horoscope,"  48 
"  Musick's  Duel,"  49 
"On  Two  Green  Apricocks 
sent  to  Mr.  Cowley,"  42 


"Sospetto  d'Herode"  (trans- 
lation), 46 

Steps  to  the  Temple,  With 
other  Delights  to  the  Muses, 

42,45 

The  Temple,  45 
"  The  Weeper,"  49 
"To  the  Name  Above  Every 

Name,"  48 
"Wishes   to    his    (supposed) 

Mistress,"  38,  48 
Crashaw,  William,  37,  38 

Darbyshire,  Thomas,  3 
Denbigh,  the  Countess  of,  43 
De  Vere,  Aubrey,  52-69,   101, 

in 

Alexander  the  Great,  53,  59 
"Ascent  of  the  Apennines," 

65 

"Autumnal  Ode,"  65 
"Church  Discipline,"  64 
"  Death  of  Copernicus,  The,' 

59 

Essays,  chiefly  on  Poetry,  69 

"  Evidences  of  Religion,"  64 

Fall  of  Rora,  59 

Inisfail,  52,  53,  54 

"Irish  Constitution  of  1872, 

The,"  64 
Legends  and  Records  of  the 

Church    and   the    Empire, 

53,  55 
Legends  of  Ireland's  Heroic 

Age,  53,  55 

Legends  of  St.  Patrick,  53 

Legends  of  the  Saxon  Saints,  54 

"  Mater  Christi,"  63 

May  Carols,  52,  63 

Medice-val  Records  and  Son- 
nets, 53,  55-8 


177 


178 


THE  POETS'  CHANTRY 


De  Vere,  Aubrey  (continued) 
Miscellaneous     and     Sacred 

Poems,  52 

"  Ode  to  an  Eolian  Harp,"  65 
"Oiseen"  poems,  55 
Recollections,  52 
Reminiscences,  67 
St.  Peter's  Chains,  53 
St.    Thomas    of  Canterbury, 

53.  59-6i 

Search  after  Proserpine,  52,  61 
Sisters,  The,  52 
"  Sorrow,"  64 

"  Striving1  of  St.  Patrick,1'  54 
The  Foray  of  Queene  Alaeve, 

53 

"  The  Higher  Purgatory,"  56 
"  The  Martyrdom,"  63 
"  The  Year  of  Sorrow,"  53 
"To  Keats,"  61 

Donne,  John,  32,  46 

Drummond  of  Hawthornden,  13 

Elizabeth,  Queen,  2,  4,  7,  9-11, 
*9»  36,  37 

Ferrar,  Nicholas,  40 

Garnett,  Father,  5,  20 
Gerard,  Father,  6,  7,  19 
Gilfillan,  Rev.  George,  40,  47,50 
Gosse,  Edmund,  44,  99 
Grosart,  Dr.  Alexander  B.,  3, 

9>  I2»  I5.  43.  46 
Gunpowder  Plot,  19,  20 

Habington,  Edward,  19 
Habington,  John,  19 
Habington,  Mary,  19,  20 
Habington,  Thomas,  19,  20 
Habington,    William,    18,     19 ; 
birth,    20;    education,    21; 
friendship     and     marriage 
with    Lucy   Herbert,  21-6  ; 
friendship     with      George 
Talbot,      26,     27,      28-30 ; 
death,  31,  32-35 
"A  Holy  Man,"  29 
"A  Mistris,"  21 
"A  Wife,"  25 

Beaumont  and  Fletcher  folio 
(verses  in),  34 


Castara,  19,  21,  27-33,  35 

Dies  Irae,  33 

"Elegies,"  27 

History  of  Edward  IV,  King 

of  England,  27,  31 
Observations   upon   Historie, 

30 

Queene  of  Arragon,  27,  31 

"  The  Grave,"  34 

"  To  Castara,  being-  debarr'd 

her  presence,"  23 
"  To  Castara,  Inquiring  why 

I  loved  her,"  23 
"  To  Castara,  Praying,"  22 
"To  Castara,  Softly  Singing 

to  Herselfe,"  22,  23 
"  To  the  Dew,  In  hope  to  see 
Castara  walking,"  23,  24  a 
"  Upon     Castara's     Depar- 
ture," 33 

Henrietta  Maria,  Queen,  43 
Herbert,  George,  37,  45,  46 
Herbert,  Lucy  ("Castara"),  18, 

21-29,  3i 

Hopkins,    Gerard,    birth,    70 ; 
education  and  conversion, 

71,  72 ;    enters   Society  of 
Jesus,  73  ;  death,  74,  75-88, 
98,  118 

"Barnfloor  and  Winepress," 

79 

'God's  Grandeur,"  78 
'  Habit  of  Perfection,  The," 

72,  74,  75 

'  Heaven  Haven,"  83 

'  Inversnaid,"  77 

'  Morning,       Midday       and 

Evening  Sacrifice,"  83 
"Our    Lady    of    the    Air," 

Si-3 

Rosa  Mystica,  79,  80 
Spring  song,  76,  77 
"  The  Starlight  Night,"  77 
"Vision    of    Mermaids,    A," 
74.  77 

Johnson,  Lionel,  120;  birth  and 

education,  121 ;  conversion, 

122,     123 ;    failing    health, 

124,  125;  death,  126,  127-41 

"A  Proselyte,"  135 


INDEX 


179 


Johnson,  Lionel  (continued) 
Art  of  Thomas  Hardy,   The, 

123,  138,  139 

Book  of  the  Rhymers'   Club, 

123 
"By    the    Statue    of    King 

Charles  at  Charing  Cross," 

123 

"Cadgwith,"  128,  129 
Catholic  Faith,  126 
Celtic  Memories,  1 26 
"Classics,  The,"  126 
"Cyhiraeth,"  130,  131 
"Dark    Angel,    The,"    123, 

135.  !36,  138 
"  Darkness,"  135 
"  De  Profundis,"  133,  134 
"Gwynedd,"  127,  128 
"Ideal,"  138 
"  In  England,"  128 
Ireland,    with   Other  Poems, 

124,  129 

"Julian  at  Eleusis,"  126 

"Malise,  To,"  127 

"Morfydd,"  134 

Nature,  126 

"Our  Lady    of    the    May," 

132 
"Our  Lady  of  the  Snows," 

'3i 

"  Oxford  Nights,"  122 
Poems,  123 

"  Precept  of  Silence,"  136 
"  Sancta  Silvarum,"  127 
"  Sertorius,"  126 
"  Sursum  Corda,"  133 
"  Te  Martyrum  Candidatus," 

132 
"The  Destroyer  of  a  Soul," 

'35 

"To  Morfydd  Dead,"  134 
"To  Parnell,"  130 
"  To  Passions,"  135 
"  Vigils,"  122 
"  Visions,"  131 
"Winchester,"  127,  135 

Leigh  Hunt,  92 
Lessius,  Leonard,  3 
Lingard,  Dr.,  30 
Lytton,  Bulwer,  92 


Manning,  Cardinal,  102,  104 
Mary   Queen    of   Scots,    2,   4, 

7»  19 

Meredith,  George,  168,  169 
Meynell,  Alice,  114;   friendship 
with     Francis    Thompson, 
144-6,     155 ;    first    poems, 
159,  160-72 

"After  a  Parting,"  160,  161 
"Child  of  Tumult,  The,"  167 
"Colour  of  Life,"  166 
"  Decivilised,"  169,  170 
"  Hours  of  Sleep,"  164 
Later  Poems,  159 
"  Letter  from  a  Girl  to    her 

Own  Old  Age,"  159,  162 
"  Pocket  Vocabularies,"  164 
Poems,  159 
Preludes,  159 
"  Renouncement,"  160 
"San   Lorenzo   Giustiniani's 

Mother,"  159,  162 
Spirit  of  Place,  166 
"  The  Neophyte,"  162 
"  The  Poet  to  his  Childhood," 

162 

The  Rhythm  of  Life,  165 
"To  a  Daisy,"  159,  162 
"To  the  Beloved,"  161 
To  the  Children,  167,  168 
Meynell,  Wilfrid,  144,  145,  155 
Milnes,  Monckton  (Lord  Hough- 
ton),  93 

Milton,  32,  34,  37 
Mountjoy,  Lord,  12 


in 


Nash,  Thomas,  7 
Newman,  Cardinal,  72,  73, 

Palotta,  Cardinal,  43 
Pater,  Walter,  72,  120,  121,  125 
Patmore,  Coventry,  33,  65,  86, 
87,  89 ;  birth,  90 ;  first 
poems  and  early  life,  91-4  ; 
first  marriage,  94,  95-8 ; 
death  of  Emily  Patmore, 
99,  100  ;  journey  to  Rome, 
101,  102  ;  second  marriage, 
102-4,  105-12;  death  of 
Mary  Patmore,  113;  third 
marriage,  114;  failing 


i8o 


THE  POETS'  CHANTRY 


Patmore,  Coventry  (continued) 
health     and     death,     115, 
116-19,  147,  156,  165 
"Amelia,"  113 
"  Beata,"  106 
"Delicise       Sapientias       de 

Amore,"  106,  118 
Dieu  et  Ma  Dame,  117 
"Eros,"  95 

"Faint  Yet  Pursuing,"  106 
"  Farewell,"  112 
Macbeth,  essay  on,  91 
Odes,  104,  105,  106 
"  Pain,"  106 
Poems,  92 

Principle  in  Art,  114 
Religio  Poetce,  114,  118 
"St.  Valentine's  Day,"  113 
"Spirit's  Epochs,  The,"  98 
"SponsaDei,"  104,  118 
"Tamerton  Church  Tower," 

The  Angel  in  the  House,  33, 
95-100,  104,  105,  115 

The  "  Azalea  "  ode,  99 

"The  Child's  Purchase,"  109 

"  The  Daughter  of  Eve,"  98 

"The  Falcon, "95 

"The  Precursor,"  118,  119 

"The  River,"  91,  93 

The  Rod,  the  Root,  and  the 
Floiver,  114 

"The  Toys,"  100 

1 '  The  Woodman's  Daughter," 

"  The  Yewberry,"  95 
"Tired  Memory,"  103,  106 
Unknown  Eros,  The,  107,  109- 

ii 

"  Unthrift,"  98 
Victories  of  Love,  97 
"\VeddingSermon,"97,98,i04 
Patmore,     Emily    (see     Emily 

Augusta  Andrews) 
Patmore,  Emily  Honoria,  100, 

101,  113 
Patmore,  Harriet   (see  Harriet 

Robson) 

Patmore,  Henry,  114 
Patmore,  Mary   (see  Marianne 
Caroline  Byles) 


Patmore,    Peter    George,    90, 

92.  93 

Phillips,  Edward,  31 
Procter,  Mrs.,  93 

Robson,  Harriet,  114,  115 
Ruskin,  John,  98,  159 

Saintsbury,  Professor,  15,  34 

Sargent,  John,  89 

Shakespeare,  2,  34 

Shelford,  Dr.,  40 

Shelley,  2,  47 

Shirley,  34 

Sidney,  Sir  Philip,  15 

Society  of   Jesus,    i,   3-5,    n, 

20,  21 

Southwell,  Richard,  2,  6,  9 
Southwell,  Robert,  i  ;  birth  and 
early  life,  2,  3  ;  work  as  a 
priest,  4-8 ;  imprisonment 
and  death,  9-12,  13-17,  46, 
62 

Burning-Babe,  13,  14 
Life  is  but  Loss,  13 
Mceonia,  14 
Mary    Magdalen's     Funeral 

Tears,  7 

Notes  on  Theology,  6 
St.  Peter's  Complaint,  12,  13 
Scorn  Not  the  Least,  13,  15 
Southwells  Poems,  3 
Times  go  by  Turns,  13 
Triumphs  over  Death,  6 
What  Joy  to  Live,  13 

Talbot,  George,  26,  27,  29,  35 
Tennyson,  Lord,  94,  95,  98 
Thompson,    Alice    (see     Alice 

Meynell) 

Thompson,    Francis,    46,    114, 
115,   133,    142;  first  poems 
and  early  life,  143,  144,  145; 
death,  146,  147-58 
"Any  Saint,"  153 
"Assumpta  Maria,"  151 
"Cloud's  Swan  Song,  The," 

157 

"  Corymbus  for  Autumn,'  150 
"  Daisy,"  155 


INDEX 


181 


Thompson,  Francis  (continued) 
"Dread    of    Height,     The," 

152,  iS3 
"Ex    Ore    Infantium,      151, 

'55 

"  From   the   Night   of  Fore- 
being,"  150 

"  Her  Portrait,"  147 

"  Holocaust,"  147 

"Judgment  in  Heaven,  A," 

J53 

Life  of  St.  Ignatius,  145 
"  Love  Declared,"  148 
"Love  in  Dian's  Lap,"  145, 

146 

"  Making  of  Viola,  The,"  155 
"  Manus     Animam     Pinxit," 

H7 

"  Narrow  Vressel,  A,"  148 
New  Poems,  145 


"Ode  to  the   Setting  Sun," 

the,  145,  150 
"Orient  Ode,"  the,  150 
Poems,  143 

Sister  Songs,  145,  154,  155 
"  The  Hound  of  Heaven,"  145 
"The  Poppy,"  155 
"  To  a  Snowflake,"  149 
"To  Daisies,"  149 
"To    Monica   Thought    Dy- 

in§V'  155 
"To  the  Dead   Cardinal   of 

Westminster,"  153 
"  Ultima,"   147 
"  Ultimum,"  147,  148 
Topcliffe,  8,  9 

Vaux  of  Harrowden,  Lord,  5 
Ward,  Wilfrid,  52 


PRINTED    BY 

WILLIAM    BRKMDON    AND    SON,    LTD. 
PLYMOUTH 


APR  28  1989 


DATE  DUE 


GAYUORD 


r ED  IN  U    S    A 


UC  SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 


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